[Previous entry: "Meeting minutes 8/19/04"]
08/27/2004: "GEO Meeting Minutes 8/26/04"
Organizational matters:
We need to re-register as a student group, which mainly entails filling out paperwork. For our own purposes, however, we will need to decide whether we would like to have exec members or not (until now we’ve been using a rotating facilitator and note-taker). We will also need to decide how to maintain the little money the organization currently has. Finally, we need to raise more! Fundraisers, anyone?
As the school year starts, we resolve to stick to a facilitator system where we will solicit agenda items in the days prior to the meeting
Times for regular meetings:
We will decide this after proposing several times at the mass meeting. We will propose Wednesday at 8:00 and Thursday at 7:00 or 8:00.
Organizing plan/chart:
Dave has suggested a massive organizing chart in which we keep track of our progress with individual grad students and departments. We may choose to split up the work load by departments. Amos and Ursula will read the CWA Organizer’s manual for next week in preparation for our organizing push this fall.
Mass Meeting:
We will stress the following items:
1. Dental and the work we have already put into this campaign.
2. Unionization: why it’s important and what it will mean for us as an organization.
3. Organizing: try to encourage people to return regularly to meetings
4. Brief history of GEO: the work we did last year
We will attempt to connect with new people by breaking out into small groups where a GEO member will lead discussion about the grievances grad students have in their own departments. We will give new attendees small but concrete tasks in order to get them involved. For instance, they could pass out flyers to their department or offer to be a department contact.
Rally:
We will schedule the rally for noon, September 9 at Dunn Meadow. We will attempt to request a microphone. We will contact Steve Ashby about being a possible speaker. Also, we will have one or two GEO members speak (any volunteers?) The focus for the GEO speaker will be on why unionization is important and how we plan to proceed with our dental plan. Finally, we will pass the microphone to a series of graduate students who would like to share their grievances with the crowd.
We have decided to focus on dental during the rally while not excluding other issues. We will use both general and dental flyers and carry a range of signs.
Flyers should be ready by next week.
Poster-making:
We made 15 posters for the rally during the meeting. There are 5 posterboards left. If any artists would like to decorate them, contact geo@indiana.edu. Our artistic skills leave something to be desired!