Approval of Previous Minutes —

Meeting minutes from Nov. 1, 2023. Motion to approve by Sunita Gandhi. Seconded by Hollie Hall. Motion passed unanimously.

Unfinished Business —

1. Review committee membership and propose changes for equality amongst constituents.
   1. Wyatt Haywood reviewed the current membership of the committee. He suggested that the committee could recommend a redistribution of the membership to match the recently updated University Senate distribution across constituencies.
   2. Hollie noted that there is justification for some committees that govern academic policies to have more faculty than staff or students.
   3. There was discussion of preferences for distribution of student positions across undergraduate/graduate and domestic/international students. It may be most effective to express this in the policy as a preference, while leaving the positions open to any student if required.
   4. We can also encourage student leadership to recruit students from outside Student Senate and from the Edwards campus. Caty will follow up with the Student Body Vice President and the Graduate Student Body President.
   5. There was discussion of solutions to resolve scheduling issues and subsequent absences. There could be an alternate system established in case normal members cannot attend meetings. Meeting minutes are also available if people miss meetings and proxy voting is available if necessary.
   6. Recommendation to change the membership of the University Senate International Affairs Committee to be equally distributed across students, faculty, and staff. The committee suggests 4 members of each constituency. For the student members, the committee would suggest a preference for distributing the spots both across undergraduate and graduate students and across domestic and international students (i.e., 1 undergraduate domestic, 1 undergraduate international, 1 graduate domestic, 1 graduate international).
      1. Motion to approve by Hollie Hall. Seconded by Sunita Gandhi.
         1. VOTE: 6 in favor. 0 not in favor. Motion passes.
      2. Recommendation will be forwarded to the University Senate President to bring up at a SenEx meeting.

New Business —

1. Discuss changes to the International Student Fee
   1. Last year, Eron Memaj discussed with the committee an increase to the International Student Fee.
      1. ISS conducted analysis of the range in fees across midwestern schools. We do not have data on whether other schools have increased their fees recently, but we are right around the middle of the range.
      2. The KU fee almost exclusively goes towards ISS staff salaries, which have increased 2 years in a row. Funds from the fee also go towards immigration compliance systems, among other things. All these costs have increased in recent years.
      3. When KU proposed the increase to KBOR, everything was tabled except for tuition. This increase to the International Student Fee is still a pending request. ISS will be re-submitting the same request to KU and KBOR. Charlie asked for the committee’s continued support in requesting this increase.
      4. Will the International Student Fee increase be a one-time thing? Can we have graduated increases across the next 3 years?
         1. This is hard because there are many variables. ISS’s operations are a fixed cost. Enrollment is increasing, which requires more support from the office. However, a larger population could be supported by a more streamlined office structure. The fee data is from 2023, so it is recent, but regular assessment is important.
   2. Charlie Bankart proposed the following idea for committee discussion: Eliminating the ISS fee altogether and implementing a much, much lower “Internationalization Fee” for students that would also serve all students. I would like to consider a $25 internationalization fee/semester that would support the provision of passports to incoming KU students, the Global Awareness Program certificate, Global Scholars Program, travel funds for graduate students, as well as the services provided to all international students by ISS.
      1. An internationalization fee was last proposed in 2004 and was strongly rejected. If it still isn’t approved, Charlie hopes that budget realignment will put more state money towards staff salaries so that ISS does not have to solely rely on the International Student Fee to fund their operations.
      2. How do we ensure that, if an Internationalization Fee is approved, it is maintained every year by Student Senate?
         1. Charlie is not familiar with how these feeds are determined and changed, so he is hoping to gather more information from Governance and Student Senate.
      3. Charlie presented several examples of how he sees such a fee promoting internationalization more broadly: provide passports to all KU students; develop programming that brings domestic and international students together; increase funding for international graduate research.
      4. Hollie expressed concern that we will get resistance from domestic students who are not interested in these opportunities.
         1. It will be important to include a wide range of benefits that don’t all necessitate leaving the country, such as opportunities centered around service learning and ethics. We can promote this as a transformative opportunity to promote KU’s values and brand.
         2. The language departments might also be supportive. We can work on gathering feedback about what such a fee would mean to them.
      5. It may still be very difficult to pass this through Student Senate. Charlie will investigate the various fee details further.
2. Move other agenda items to the next meeting, which will be in January.
   1. Changes to Standing Charge #3, if relevant
   2. Discussion of KU’s response/communications regarding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict/War and if the committee wishes to bring suggestions to the University Senate President to bring to senior administration.