I. Call to Order


II. Additions to the Agenda


III. CTF Reader's meeting - Chris Crick

• Will meet after meeting tonight

IV. Library Committee Meeting - Siobhan Quinlan

• Subgroup of students who are not done with dissertation but who are not fully enrolled don't have full access to online library resources
• They have netIDs but these IDs don't give them access to everything
• Yale's online subscriptions are contracted to serve the Yale community - this service should not extend to alumns
• Pamela Schirmeister is looking into this
• Is this something the Deans can work out or do we need to do some advocacy? If the latter, what role could we play with respect to the Deans?
• The group of students with the problem is likely very small
• It has come up in the past (and at Steering) that the library has limited hours during college recesses. Do we still discuss this with the library committee?
• Budgets are being cut across the board here - it costs money to keep the library open, and we have been turned down in the past
• The Law School library is separate from the rest of the libraries - it's open until 2:00 a.m. most nights and doesn't shut down so much during recesses. Can this facility be made more accessible to non-law students?
• The Law library is restricted to law student-use only during the month of December, and the law school is pretty strict about these policies (there are residences attached to the law school)
• Age-old question: why do we have a problem with limited hours? Do we need access to the circulation desk or just study space? The solutions to these two issues are different
• This is a Humanities concern that often comes up at departmental meetings
• Books in study carrels?
• The Chemistry and the Classics departments give students keys to their libraries for after hours.
• It is unclear how big of a concern this currently is.

V. Recap of Provost Meeting (please let me know if you need more detail)
Basic Agenda:

• Intro - CTF - Mentoring Week
• Transit - Shuttle routes and biking on campus concerns
• Health Care - Dental Plan, Rx, and Mental Health appointment wait-times
• Housing - Whitehall, would like formal dialogue between grad school and planning committees
• Economic Downturn
• Wrap-Up - Administrative branches should be more pro-active in seeking graduate student voices. Graduate students want to be involved in high-level planning committees. Offices should formally commit to serving graduate students. Will have a Provost meeting once a semester from now on.

Quick Recap:

• Provost Salovey is sympathetic to our concerns - didn't promise anything but we didn't ask for anything specific
• CTF funding will (tacitly) not be cut. He likes the idea of Mentoring Week
• E-mail him re: bike share. He is interested in bike safety. Use canal as means of bike transportation?
• Shuttle-users advisory committee - get this re-started
• West Campus expansion will open the door for transit reconsideration in general
• Housing - nothing new yet. Continue with planning meetings
• Healthcare - keep doing what we are doing
• He thinks that it is good that graduate student advocacy groups conduct surveys (rather than admin offices), but it is important that administrative offices are aware that they are here to serve graduate students, too. If there are problems - contact Dean Butler first, then him
• Meet with him twice per year

VI. Bike Share Program - Sara Heitkamp and Laura Sima

• Two points where bikes can be dropped-off. Security issue. HGS will be the main location for graduate student bikes in this program
• We are purchasing bikes with the undergraduates so that a discount is applied - but their bike share program will be separate from ours other than that
• A card-swipe system would cost $40K, key access $12K
• 20 bikes total: 4 here at HGS, 16 for undergrads
• This is just a pilot program, but 4 bikes isn't enough to allay the cost of coming all the way down to HGS to see if one is even available
• Would want to be able to rent spontaneously - would ideally not want to have to plan for when a bike will become available
• Build this into existing infrastructure (i.e. have drop-off sites peppered about campus - at security stations)
• Our program will have to be separate from the undergraduates because we do not have access to the colleges
• Recruit people to use bikes during orientation
• Just one-day rentals now; overnight might be OK
• Tie this to graduate residential colleges? Two bikes at HGS and two at Helen Hadley
• Needs to be open to all graduate students if GPSS funds it
• Otherwise, make it just for students in HGS and other housing. This makes 4 bikes serve the size of the community (for the pilot)
• Helmets & liability waiver
• Have bikes placed at HGS, but open to everyone
• Cannot charge a fee because YCC money cannot be used to pay for a service for which they plan to charge
• Studies claim that what makes a city safer for biking is the number of bikers
• Lisa Brandes will include a session on bike safety, theft, and registration at orientation
• First Friday in April - free bike tune-up if register bike through police department

VII. Mentor Award Readers

• Eli (NS)
• Sloan (NS)
• Kerra (SS)
• Xin (SS)
• Justin Barr (H)
• Bobbi (H)

VIII. Departmental meeting coming up? Sloan and Eli are compiling info to be discussed at these.


IX. Motion to Adjourn - Second