U-PASS Advisory Board July 10th, 2012 Present: Adam Sherman- GPSS Representative, GPSS President Austin Bell- ASUW Representative Bill Dow- ASUW Representative, Advisory Board Chair Celeste Gilman- Transportation Services Evan Smith- ASUW Representative (via conference call) Katie Bass- U-PASS Liaison Melanie Mayock- GPSS Representative, Advisory Board Vice-Chair Michelle Rhoads- Transportation Services Miles Fernandez- ASUW Representative Rene Singleton- Student Life Zach Nostdal- GPSS Representative I. II. III. IV.

Meeting called to order at 9:01 a.m. Public comment period a. No guests were present to speak Approval of minutes- Bill Dow a. Motion to approve minutes b. Motion passed NightRight NightWalk LEAN Project-Michelle Rhoads a. Melanie Mayock will be there as the GPSS representative. b. Comment (Michelle): It is three full days. It is helpful if you’re there for all three days. On day one, looking at the current state of the programs. Day two looking at what we want it to look like. Day three, how to get there. c. Comment (Evan): Sent out a message to AB asking if anyone wants to volunteer. We can also reach out to the campus safety committee and maybe even SARVA or other organizations to see if we can find someone interested. d. Comment (Bill): It would be useful if we could get someone there that isn’t part of the usual transportation group so that we can get some new thoughts. Someone from Women’s Action Commission might be useful. e. Comment (Michelle): Just as a reminder about the purpose of the project, we are trying to look at some of the unintended gaps or overlaps so that we can improve both services. This way, we can get improvements done by fall quarter. Want to get ASUW representative by the end of this week, because the workshop is at the end of July. f. Question (Melanie): Are these programs funded by U-PASS? g. Comment (Michelle): NightRide is completely funded by U-PASS. h. Comment (Evan): Will send out info at the end of today to try to get someone.

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Comment (Michelle): The second day is probably the most critical to attend. The third day is probably the least critical. j. Question (Melanie): Are there going to be staff or faculty representatives? k. Comment (Josh): There will be. They are more operationally oriented though. Staff and faculty can only ride if they are U-PASS members, or if they purchase a ticket. l. Comment (Celeste): Alicia Halberg is going to participate and she has used the service. As well, she was an RA and so has feedback from that experience. Arbitration/Resolution follow up –Josh Kavanagh a. Comment (Josh): Had the meeting with the President, Provost, Charles Kennedy, and V’Ella Warren. It was a very productive meeting in terms of laying a background for them. While I was very concerned coming in to the meeting, and it appeared that we weren’t in a particularly good position based on prior meetings that we hadn’t been included in. However, I came out of the meeting feeling as if we are in a much better position than we thought. We emphasized and there seemed to be and understanding that there is a trust relationship with the administration’s collection of these fees on student’s behalf. Coming out of this meeting, I feel as if there is a better understanding of the fees held in trust and the importance of that business relationship. b. Comment (Melanie): Adam and I met with the Provost. She is pretty concerned about money. She is also concerned about the facilities renovation fee which is on the order of $1 million. The administration hasn’t decided what they are doing, but they are looking at a range of possibilities. One of the possibilities is fighting the arbitration. Another is making the U-PASS an opt in/opt out program. It will ultimately be the President’s decision. We asked what the steps to making the U-PASS opt in/opt out would be. The Provost thought that it would be just a simple administration change. She thought that perhaps the Board of Regents would not be necessary. The Advisory Board should be looking into what that process would actually be. c. Comment (Josh): There is a challenge in that the primary council to the Provost to date is advising from an HR perspective. That perspective does not adequately account for the administrative complexities of the U-PASS or the personal impacts to students of changing the program. d. Comment (Adam): Not sure if the administration understands the legal impacts of the Advisory Board MOU. There are very specific stipulations in how the fee would become not universal. That process, as outlined in the MOU doesn’t involve the administration at all. e. Comment (Evan): It was clear in the MOU that the student governments were given governance authority over this fee. I’m not sure if the Provost understands that yet. Also, what would happen if the regents just stopped collecting the fee?

f. Comment (Melanie): Just had that meeting last week. We are going to be talking about this at our GPSS executive meeting next week. We need to be looking at possibilities and strategies. g. Comment (Josh): As an outcome of meeting with the President, the President indicated that Jack Johnson was going to be his point on this issue. Josh has a meeting with Jack, if one or two people from the Advisory Board want to be in that meeting, we can probably do that. h. Question (Adam): What is the likelihood of getting someone with a legal understanding in that meeting? We need to understand what is within the legal scope of possibilities. It would help us understand what we can do and what possibilities we are looking at. i. Comment (Josh): Before he left and came back, Jack was in the University of Washington’s Attorney General’s office. Karin Nyrop is the assistant attorney general who advised on the creation of universal U-PASS. We very well might be able to get her or someone else with a legal background in that meeting j. Comment (Evan): It sounds like this conversation is still very much top level. Do you think it would be beneficial to wait a little bit to engage others? Do we let the University decide what path to take? Should we start talking to the Deans about it? I had a very enlightening conversation with Bob Stacey about this, and he thought that having departments pay was the right policy. k. Comment (Rene): To echo what Adam was talking about, people are going to end up deferring to their bosses. It’s summertime. Some people are trying to vacate. We should be talking to high end levels and get legal advice before we start talking to mid-level administrators. Maybe what we should do is have some sort of discussion with Karin, and start talking to Jack, as he is very knowledgeable about things. We don’t want to look like we are lobbying when we don’t know what we are advocating for yet. l. Comment (Evan): The language about how this program was created is about shared governance. Don’t want to lose that. If we keep that in mind, we will come to a better solution. m. Comment (Josh): Generally agree with Rene’s thought about when is the right time to talk to people that are little bit lower on the totem pole in terms of decision making power. Bob Stacey might be an exception to that. He seems like a trusted advisor. Think that the Provost is still working to fully understand the issue. In terms of the rhetorical issues that you all are hitting on, it is important that the sovereignty of the fee remains intact. Also, the ability to assess such a fee is important. n. Comment (Melanie): And to preserve it. o. Comment (Josh): The consequences of the program, and the institutional impact of that has perhaps not yet been fully understood by the administration. The conversation with the Provost demonstrated that. There is a technical component to the shared

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governance, but there is also a political component to it that I have heard surprisingly little conversation about to date. But there is a great significance to the administration backing out of an agreement with students. There has been surprisingly little weight given to this in conversation yet. Maybe there are stakes there, maybe there aren’t. The conversation needs to be had. p. Comment (Adam): Your point is well taken. Distinct point: there is no case research or case law pertaining to student imposed fees. There are no Washington State cases regarding if the administration has to impose this fee. The arbitrator’s decision turned them into imposers of the fee. We are in more or less uncharted territory. There are legal aspects in addition to the technical and political. There are also policy impacts. q. Comment (Melanie): We absolutely want to preserve the universal UPASS. If we have to go out and make a lot of noise to do so, we should do so. But there is also a large concern about funding of the U-PASS. Bob Stacey makes a good point about other fees and the ways that we need to pay for things. It potentially impacts other students if the ASEs don’t have to pay for these fees. For the student governments, this is a tricky issue. r. Comment (Rene): It would be really nice going forward if we could have some of those legal conversations. But going into the fall, we need to remember that not every student is happy about the union, about the U-PASS, or about the renovation fee. Therefore the summer time is perhaps the best time to get all of this lined up. That way, by August or September, we can know where we are going, and be in a better position to deal with the general tide of student opinion. Recall some of the angst moments that have occurred in the past dealing with these fees. We might have more upcoming. I would hate to have the U-PASS be one pocket of passionate students fighting against another pocket of passionate students. We can’t make an assumption about what the student population is thinking. s. Comment (Josh): Think I heard two points in that. One, be measured and don’t make assumptions. Two, get this done this summer to avoid conflict among student groups playing out publicly. Advisory Board Bylaws- Bill Dow a. Comment (Bill): Just wanted to talk about appointments for next year. The way that we set it up in our bylaws, the chair and vice-chair have to be determined by the second meeting of the fiscal year, which is our next meeting. Bill is planning on stepping down next meeting. Question (Josh): Are you planning on stepping down from the committee or the chair? b. Comment (Bill): Committee c. Question (Melanie): Even with the elections for chair and vice-chair next meeting, we could have re-elections for chair and vice-chair after the summer, correct?

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d. Comment (Bill): Yes Planning for ’12-’13 School Year- Celeste Gilman and Josh Kavanagh a. Comment (Celeste): We should lay out a plan. The critical period is that we need to have a proposal to the Advisory Board by the end of January. We need to have a decision by ASUW and GPSS the end of March. Whenever schedules start being created for ASUW and GPSS, we should get an agenda item on the necessary agendas in January, February, and March so that we will not accidentally run out of time. b. Question (Melanie): Don’t we only need to send it to both senates if we raise the fee? c. Comment (Rene): Yes. Perhaps we should look at making a calendar about how long these sorts of things generally take. And update it on the new website. d. Question (Melanie): If there isn’t a resolution on the arbitration decision, what does that do for contract negotiation for the U-PASS? e. Comment (Josh): It makes it significantly more complicated. We will look to the Advisory Board, if you all are still committed to having it be universal, we will negotiate that way, because we have the reserve funds in order to ensure stability and those could protect the program from uncertainty in the short term. On another note, the institutional poverty argument, that we don’t necessarily have the money to fund this via departments, that it ultimately just comes back to students. Keep in mind that if the universal aspect of the U-PASS unwinds, then that really comes back to students. Also keep in mind that the University signed the contracts with the union. They had the opportunity to resolve this issue in negotiations, but they didn’t take it. They accepted the risk, and thus the risk must be born at the institutional level. f. Comment (Adam): One might question the wisdom of negotiating a contract while litigation is pending. Website logistics- Katie Bass a. Question (Katie): What emails do we want to list on the new Advisory Board website? Just the upassab email, or personal emails? b. Comment (Melanie): Talked about this at beginning of last year, think we are mostly more comfortable with using the AB email. c. Decision: Only the upassab email will be listed on the Advisory Board website. Annual reports – Melanie Mayock a. Comment (Melanie): Sean and I had a meeting. We put together a potential outline for the annual report. In it there are four sections: Internal workings of the Advisory Board, budget planning and ridership and contract work, publicity and outreach, exemptions and arbitration. Conclude with looking forward to next year. Something pretty short, with just a couple pages for each section.

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b. Question (Bill): Are we planning on splitting the work up between the different members of the Advisory Board? I would be happy to take a section. c. Comment (Josh): Don’t forget that Katie is staff support for the Advisory Board and is always available to help with the report. d. Question (Rene): Can you put the appointees names from throughout the year in the document? e. Question (Melanie): Useful to start it as a Google doc? f. Comment (Michelle): Can have dashboard metrics on there to so it isn’t just text. Adjournment at 9:42 a.m.