The Graduate Student Organization covered business and executive reports, voted on several proposals and set up the GSO committees at its meeting Wednesday night in the Life Sciences Complex.

GSO President Can Aslan started off the meeting with his executive report and spent a considerable amount of time highlighting two new policies concerning the graduate student body of Syracuse University.

The two policies were the Food Services Catering Policy and the travel policy that the university implemented this year. The two policies were similar in principle — the students looking for reimbursement in catering and travel agencies had to use university-approved vendors and agencies, whereas in the past, they could use any vendor of their choice.

Aslan said GSO contacted the university about the Food Services Catering Policy, and learned the costs of catering would be lower if the university used another agency.

Regarding the travel policy, Aslan said GSO reached out to Chancellor Kent Syverud and is hoping to sort out an agreement soon.

“GSO is impacted too,” Aslan said. “In the last meeting, we announced the (National Association of Graduate-Professional Students). So we travel for the NAGPS, and that’s covered by the GSO funds. We are told by the school that we also have to go through the system to be allowed to be reimbursed.”

Comptroller Jose Muller discussed funding for the Student Association on Terrorism and Security Analysis (SATSA) Annual Conference, which would cost the GSO $5,500. The conference, which is sponsored by the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, would bring in seven speakers and the money would cover the speakers’ travel and stay.

The topic of this year’s SATSA conference will be the emerging threat of cybersecurity, but the speakers have not yet been decided. Past speakers included members of the United States Navy, the National Security Agency and an official from the Yemeni Embassy in the U.S.

Some members of GSO had issues with the proposal because its funding was being requested even before the speakers were decided on, and only 50 graduate students had attended the conference the past year. There were two votes on dropping the amount of funding to $2,000 and postponing the voting on the issue to the next meeting. The organization ultimately decided it would fund the conference and requested $5,000.

Other issues discussed were the sexual assault taskforce, financial training for committees and the forming of committees.

Vice President of Internal Affairs Sam Leitermann said GSO members were required to sign up for a committee after the meeting if they had not yet done so. Each committee was required to select a president, vice president and a meeting date after.

Published on September 30, 2015 at 9:29 pm

Contact Deniz: dsahintu@syr.edu