U-PASS Advisory Board July 24th, 2012 Present: Adam Sherman- GPSS President Austin Bell- ASUW Representative Bill Dow- ASUW Representative, Advisory Board Chair Evan Smith- ASUW Representative, ASUW President Josh Kavanagh- Transportation Services Katie Bass- U-PASS Liaison Melanie Mayock- GPSS Representative, Advisory Board Vice-Chair Miles Fernandez- ASUW Representative Rene Singleton- Student Life Zach Nostdal- GPSS Representative

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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 b. Second c. No objections Approval of agenda- Bill Dow a. Motion to approve b. Second c. No objections Advisory Board Elections –Bill Dow a. Comment (Bill): We should go over what the chair and vice-chair do. The chair is the permanent presiding officer; they help to develop the agenda. They serve for the duration of the fiscal year which goes from July 1 to June 30th. The chair is essentially the representing person for the board. b. Comment (Melanie): The vice-chair talks to visitors when they come to speak. Also helps to set the agenda. The vice-chair often takes on administrative duties. c. Comment (Josh): The chair and vice-chair also help act on behalf of the AB between meetings when the whole board cannot meet. d. Comment (Melanie): It is not required by the bylaws that we have one GPSS and one ASUW representative, but that seems to be good. e. Comment (Melanie): I cannot be chair or vice-chair as I will have to resign from the board to be in Olympia during winter quarter. f. Comment (Bill): Can we take nominations? g. Nomination (Miles): I nominate myself for chair. i. seconded h. Nomination (Bill): I nominate Melanie for chair. i. Seconded

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ii. Comment (Melanie): Accept i. Comment (Miles):I would like to withdraw my nomination j. Comment (Bill): Any other nominations? k. Motion (Bill): Move to make Melanie chair by acclamation. i. Second ii. No objections iii. Effective immediately iv. Resignation (Bill): After today, Bill withdraws from the committee l. Comment (Adam): Because Melanie will be forced to resign after Autumn quarter, based on the bylaws, selecting the vice-chair is selecting who will be chair winter quarter and after. m. Comment (Melanie): Nominations for vice-chair? n. Nomination (Austin): Miles Fernandez i. Seconded ii. No objects iii. Move to elect by acclamation iv. No objections Arbitration – Josh Kavanagh a. Comment (Josh): I would yield to Adam and Evan, who have been having higher level conversations about this more recently. b. Comment (Adam): The two of us met with the President and Provost. One of the things discussed was arbitration. This conversation was pretty much a repeat of Melanie and Adam’s discussion with the Provost several weeks ago. They don’t really know what they are going to be doing. There are some significant barriers to a legal challenge. Unless the arbitration decision is deemed arbitrary or capricious, most other courts will treat these decisions with deference. However, there might very well be clarification sought. There is some interaction between the arbitration and the new contract that was recently negotiated. There are some questions about what was covered in the contract and how that interacts with the ASE fees. Once the legal issues are resolved, there are also some questions about what the path forward is for students. We (Evan and Adam) were clear in the meeting that it is essential that students are involved in the decisions about what the path forward is. It is still unclear about how that will look. It could possibly range from being a student taskforce to a discussion in which students are told what is going to be happening and asked for feedback. c. Comment (Evan): It is very clear that the program will be universal in fall. The future after that is less clear. We were really trying to push the idea of shared governance in the meeting, as that was part of what we brought to the Regents two years ago. I’m not sure how well that message was heard or retained. d. Comment (Melanie): It is important to remember that Michael Young was not here two years ago, when this was in front of the Regents. I don’t know what else Ana Marie was doing at the time, but I don’t know how well they understand the issue of shared governance yet.

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i. Comment (Adam): We made them a packet that was thorough but also brief enough to reasonably expect administrators at that level to read it. Young had it at the meeting. They have been properly briefed on the issue. ii. Comment (Melanie): The point is that they weren’t here when this started to become a big political issue on campus. We need to be prepared to take a strong public stance. The fact that they are saying that they are committed to keeping it universal for fall quarter is a big red flag, because to me it indicates that they are not committed to keeping it universal in the future. Comment (Adam): I think that having several plans for going forward is a good idea. Comment (Evan): This program is kind of unorthodox given the way that the University is run. However, shared governance is necessary. Comment (Melanie): They will not include student opinions in the decision making process unless they see barriers to them just changing it on their own. We need to create that barrier i. Comment (Adam): We made it clear that we thought that the MOU was a legally binding contract. We do not want to start off this process confrontationally, but we will if necessary. We do very much want student governments on board, and the MOU says that they must be in order for the fee to be dissolved. We should pursue multiple avenues at the same time without having to start off confrontationally. We should exercise some soft power. ii. Comment (Josh): From a strategy stand point I agree with everything that you have laid out. To the degree that it is helpful, I have the ability to communicate that students have a hammer and they are polishing it, even if they are not brandishing it. iii. Comment (Adam): As long as they understand that our first goal is to work collaboratively with them. Comment (Melanie): I wonder if it’s a good idea by the next meeting to try and have a plan or several about the different avenues that we can look at. Comment (Adam): I know there has been a lot of emphasis at the state level to ensure that the University has sufficient autonomy to run itself in the most effective way possible, but do we have any sense from a city or county level about how much public pressure we will be able to put on Administrators over this issue? i. Comment (Josh): Generally there will be significant resistance by those other leaders to doing that. But there are two angles we could consider. One, that the UW has consistently sought and won support for the U-PASS from City and County officials and that in order for the UW to continue to be successful in that effort we have to demonstrate that the Administration is using all the tools in its own toolbox to preserve the program. Two, the County has a significant business interest in preserving this program. Also the President and the King County Executive have a long and good

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history. The Executive could probably make the case that they went significantly out of their way for the UW in this program, and it needs to be preserved. ii. Comment (Melanie): Historically, we have seen cooperation between the city and the UW on transportation issues such as parking. Comment (Adam): We need to have in one of our plans a timeline about when it is appropriate to reach out to other stakeholders and interested parties such as the City and the County. Question (Josh): Speaking of reaching out-- what formal conversations to date have occurred with David (the UAW President) about the unintended consequences of arbitration and returning to the table to get clearer answer? i. Comment (Adam): We have been hearing a number of possibilitiescould lead to a reduction in RAs or TAs as they will cost more. Could lead to a tuition increase. Listed off several undesirable possibilities last time I talked to him. He seemed to think that the University just needed to come up with the money. I’m not sure if he thinks that there is just a pool of money that they weren’t using. He doesn’t seem too inclined to meddle, he wants to let the administration administer, as long as it doesn’t impact students. ii. Question (Rene): Are they supporting the student governance model, or are they thinking about those students in terms only of funds and money? You can’t pick one group of student interests to defend. Am I wrong? iii. Comment (Evan): No, you are not wrong. I’ve tried to make it clear that while we are finding a path forward, we need to find one that has shared governance. It is not coming through to the administration as we understand it. I don’t know exactly how to make them understand it as we do. Should we just show the MOU to them and hold them to it? But if there is a disagreement, I don’t know what we do from there. Comment (Rene): Need to have a single strategy. If you all are split, there will be problems. Comment (Josh): I shared some early indicators about a week ago with Melanie about the final cut of the aggregate utilization patterns. We are still trying to get around the privacy issues regarding the data that HR is asking for. Of the affected ASEs, well north of 80% are active users (meaning more U-PASS usage than just a single tap to confirm activation). I don’t know if the union has any sense of that, or of just how small the tail that is wagging the dog is. i. Comment (Melanie): That is a good point. Our strategies need to include the union. They don’t really have any reason to change their strategy.

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ii. Comment (Josh): Here is their reason- if the universal program is compromised, the over 80% of ASEs that are using their U-PASS will see their passes rise to $132 a quarter. n. Comment (Rene): It is very easy for people to just think about themselves. We should use these numbers to our advantage to make a bigger impact about how these fees are going to impact students. o. Comment (Josh): As a back of the envelope estimate, there will be $119,000 in net costs to ASEs only. This is not including the impact to other students. i. Comment (Melanie): The other number that we might want to have, is the cost to ASEs if the universal program collapses, but they are still held to a student U-PASS rate because right now we are treating them as if they will have to pay the employee U-PASS rate. ii. Question (Adam): This $119,000 will be the additional cost to ASEs if the universal aspect of the U-PASS program went away, is that correct? iii. Comment (Josh): I took the $132 per quarter non-universal rate and subtracted the $76 universal rate. I then multiplied by the estimated number of ASE participants. p. Question (Melanie): Do we know for certain that the U-PASS will cost $132 if the ASEs are exempted? i. Comment (Josh): Initially, yes. If the universal aspect totally fell apart- there have been some very rough calculations of what UPASS rates will look like. It isn’t encouraging. q. Comment (Adam): We should start to talk to David about this. i. Comment (Josh): Once it comes time to bring David into the conversation, I need to figure out if I can even be in the room to listen or if that will start to be a joint labor management discussion. ii. Comment (Rene): I think that that discussion should stay between students and David. r. Comment (Josh): The fall quarter commitment is a stronger commitment than I have heard from them to date. It is progress, and it is good. Also, I did a briefing for Jack Johnson. Will send the slide deck from that meeting out to the Advisory Board. It includes a table that starts to take into account the price elasticity, and if the universal aspect falls apart. s. Question (Melanie): Do the transit agencies know what is going on? i. Comment (Josh): To some extent. We have been assuring them that there is no need to panic. In the fall we will hopefully be presenting a pricing strategy to the AB that will hopefully assume universality. We don’t start price negotiations with transit agencies until spring. The only difficulty is that we are now going into faculty/staff negotiations. We might need to add some contentions to ensure that we have ASE rides appropriately accounted for. Annual Report –Mayock/Wilson a. Comment (Melanie): No significant progress to report yet.

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b. Comment (Melanie): There is a Google document on the upassab UW account available for collaborative work. c. Comment (Josh): It strikes me that the annual report is a celebration of shared governance and what we have achieved. This document might be of value to us moving forward in discussions with the administration. We might want to strategically consider that when evaluating when to make the report and what to include in it. Agenda setting- Katie Bass a. Comment (Katie): Does anyone have anything to add to the agenda for our next meeting? We decided to add agenda setting as a standing agenda item at the end of each meeting. b. Question (Melanie): Do we need to meet in two weeks? i. Comment (Josh): I think that the conversation that we had today is evidence that we should be meeting. c. Comment (Adam): For the mostly silent members in the room, we appreciate your silent listening. But, it would also be nice to hear if you have any considerations from angles that we are not seeing. d. Comment (Zach): Regular in person meetings are working well. It’s nice to hear about all of the high level work going on around this issue, even if we don’t have much to verbally contribute. e. Question (Rene): For the newer members to the Board- would it be refreshing to go over the whole past of the AB tying in with the annual report? i. Comment (Adam): It would probably be beneficial to pass out to the AB the regents item. It is in the U-PASS binders. Circulate the binder, as well as the Regents’ item. f. Question (Melanie): Would it be too much to ask that someone from TS do a presentation about the AB history? g. Comment (Josh): No, we can do that. Also, if we want to be looking at an AB retreat in the fall, we can help plan the logistics for that. h. Comment (Rene): The AB meeting minutes as well as the binders are useful in understanding how the AB progressed. If you are going to do a retreat, wait until those with summer jobs come back from the summer. Move to adjourn a. Adjournment at 9:45 a.m.