Highlights - Graduate Students' Union

GSU – EAC Meeting Highlights Date: Nov 7 2013 Time: 2:30pm Chair: Natasha, Vice-Chair. Members Present: Brad, Natasha Guests: Kim, Aisha th

1. Great Barrier Hunt: Audits will be made on campus to see how accessible or inaccessible places are. Student hope to bring forward information to the University and show how to better accessibility on campus. The Hunt will be auditing 3 buildings: University College, 21 Sussex Building, North Borden Building Aisha brought posters, event will run from 1-4pm. Meeting at the Multi-Faith Center. Sign up sheets will be available beforehand. The hunt will be followed by a discussion about the accessibility issues on campus. As for the hunt: people will find a package to know which building they are allocated with a scenario case connected of a potential student with a particular disability and how they would find a way to access the building they need to go to for to their hunt. The SBA is looking for some group leaders to take people to the locations for the hunt and for people to contribute to the scenarios. How will people document their journey?There will be a chart for them to fill out. People can tweet and take pictures. Can push the University to respond faster to these issues. The Hunt has a Facebook page to get connected with social media. As well, there will be a raffle prize for those who complete the hunt. The event is on Nov. 18 2013. Th

2. Update: on Public/Private Interest in Education. Let's have a name call in the committee listserve and have it figured out by next Thursday November 14 . Alumni for a Free UofT are interested in working with us in doing work regarding public education. th

Folks think it would be cool to have a public forum from people/groups striving towards free education. It is suggested to involve ASSE (A Quebec student association). Let's look at connecting with other folks who would be good on the panel. The panel could serve as a kick off to the campaign. We'll need a month lead in time with a further month promoting. If we get someone from ASSE, its certain a crowd will come out. OPIRG and other student union groups might be interested in helping.

Students at the Cooper Union in the US were able to fight back from external imposed tuition and could also be good for a panel. 3. Network building campaign: We discuss groups we should be doing outreach towards, student groups nationally provincially. Action item: Natasha to go through student club website to see who we would want to connect with. Speak to Dorothy Goldin-Rosenberg from OISE to see which public civil societies we'd like to connect with. Brad: Did some outreach to ASSU the Arts and Science Students’ Union, all 5 student unions, various members of St. George Roundtable. UTSU, and other student unions haven't responded to work with us yet. ASSU is looking to determine if they can get bell hooks to come to campus as a guest speaker. They may be looking at getting support and advocacy from GSU on this issue. 4. External campaigns and equity initiatives: At our Fall Orientation, a student noted that they were interested in forming a racialized student caucus at UTGSU. The committee felt like we should encourage this to happen and also potentially an Aboriginal student caucus. Caucuses don’t have to be formed by members from just our Council – it can be any member. 5. PanAM Games Corporations: Has recently become privitized and corporate as a for profit organization. Merits further investigation. It certainly sends a particular message about privatizing public resources and the privatization of the University. Quite troubling since in spirit PanAM Games is supposed to represent surpassing human limitations of the public. Something we can use in our public/private campaign. 6. Cinema Politica: Next Film on Nov 21 : The film is about the commercialization of Children and Childhood. Natasha is to set up the film, as Brad will be at CFS National AGM. st

Divine Interventions is a new series of films from CP that the network would like us to consider screening. We'll have to plan for a film screening party again for the Winter series. We will have people select which films to screen from this series. If we show a Divine Interventions film, we can partner with the Multi Faith Centre and poster accordingly. 7. Other Requests:

We received a request from Erin Sperling to help out with a project with a few students from OISE and scientists for the right to know working on bringing a panel of science policy for Congress in May. They would like GSU's support in pushing the Federation to do it. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance will be having an event on Nuclear power on Nov 20 in the peace lounge at OISE. A speaking event with Jack Gibbons. To be put in the GSU listserve. If people can't be here we can still make decisions over email. th