The Graduate Student Council tackled graduate stipends and diversity at their weekly meeting last night — and even had enough time left over to introduce the oft-postponed “GSChecklist.”

By a unanimous vote, the council allocated $1100 of its advocacy budget to the diversity committee in an effort to improve communication on this issue with the student body. Most of the money will be used for a quarterly flyering campaign to spread awareness of diversity issues on campus and for three “town hall” sessions that the GSC will hold this year to hear student opinion on diversity in the student body and the faculty.

“I think any kind of communication that we can do with students is a good idea,” said GSC co-chair Paul Gurney, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering.

Diversity Committee Chairman Cullen Buie, a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering, emphasized the need to include the broader student body in the committee’s deliberations.

“Right now, we’re a very insulated group,” Buie said. “We discuss things among ourselves, and we talk to the administration. We need to reach out more to the student body.”

Buie also outlined the three goals that the diversity committee wants to achieve by the end of the academic year — building a relationship with the new Vice Provost for Graduate Education, developing a five-year plan with the undergraduate and faculty senates and institutionalizing graduate-student involvement in diversity issues.

While the diversity committee has been a part of the GSC for years, the stipend committee is just getting off the ground.

“I want to get a committee formed and get some momentum going,” said Committee Chair George Bloom, a graduate student in Comparative Literature.

According to Bloom, graduate stipends were raised by four percent this year. But the real sticking point of last night’s meeting was the increase in Terminal Graduate Registration (TGR) fees that happened in 2004.

“This is just to make life miserable for graduate students,” said GSC member Maxim Afanasyer.

TGR fees are applied to graduate students who have completed all required coursework, but are still conducting departmental research. Bloom said that since “graduate students are expensive,” the University increased the fees to encourage students to graduate once they have fulfilled their requirements.

The stipend committee has yet to formulate a definite agenda and is still determining a regular meeting time.

After two weeks of consecutive postponement, GSC co-chair Jenny Allen introduced the “GSChecklist” at last night’s meeting. The checklist is a list of advocacy, programming, funding and other goals the GSC aims to achieve by the end of the year.

Some of the items on the checklist are specific — adding a Marguerite route to the International Food Market, having the University adopt a five-year plan to increase diversity and securing funding for extending the GoPass program.

Others are more ambiguous, like obtaining funding to increase graduate diversity, creating incentives to improve advising and meeting regularly with Vaden officials.