Graduate Student Senate discussed issues regarding healthcare, amendments to the GSS constitution and autonomy for the organization on Tuesday.
GSS is facing a 29% increase in healthcare costs from its provider. President Dareen Tadros pointed out that this would be an additional burden on students and the extra cost would be about three months’ rent. Emilia Boue, senator of Center of International Studies, brought up that the increase also affected international students who were unsure of how the American healthcare market operates.
Data from previous years was brought up, which showed that graduate students would rather pay an increase than lose health coverage. It was determined through discussion that this was due to low response volume. Furthermore, graduate students were unclear about how much the increase would actually be.
“I also remember the language [in the survey] was very complicated and very difficult to understand,” Viktoria Marinova, commissioner for International Student Affairs said.
GSS also discussed how further amendments to its constitution should be made. The organization is moving to remove the Board of Trustees from the process. Amendments would be made if they received a two-thirds approval after two meetings.
As a recurring topic of discussion, GSS members brought up the autonomy and independence of their group. Members claim they do not always get graduate student representation in student organizations and receive different funding than Student Senate.
“Most of the funding for student activities (and) grant proposals was allocated to the Student Senate over Graduate Student Senate, disproportionately so,” Brett Fredericksen, department representative for environment and plant biology, said. “Also, seats on university committees, maybe it’s like health insurance committee, don’t necessarily always ask for a graduate student representative if they already have a representative for student senate.”
Members reaffirmed their power as a self-governing group at the meeting.
“We’ve been working on this as a body for the last three years to clarify that Graduate Student Senate is the voice of graduate students and the administration comes to Graduate Student Senate for that voice exclusively,” Fredericken said.
