At a Wednesday night meeting, the Graduate Student Council voted to increase its funding for GSC recognized groups from $500 per semester to $650. After a club funding request is approved, the money can be used for any of their events and initiatives throughout the semester, explained GSC President Farha Mithila at the meeting.
The GSC also shared results of its 2024 Quality of Life Survey, which focused on assessing graduate students’ food security levels, experiences facing bias and discrimination, as well as access to faculty meetings and departmental information. The council plans to use the survey’s results to inform their advocacy for improvements to the quality of graduate student life.
At the meeting, the Graduate Labor Organization discussed the progress of implementing their second union contract with the University ratified in December.
School of Professional Studies Dean Shankar Prasad shared actions SPS has taken to improve graduate student life at the meeting. Prasad highlighted the food pantry, launched in October of last year, that has already provided “over 600 units of food” to master’s students. A similar pantry has also been implemented in the medical school, he added.
Additionally, Prasad shared that the Graduate School’s funding for the E-Gap program — which supports students with urgent and unexpected academic needs — has been increased.
Prasad also added that the SPS has been working to address longer-term structural issues to support graduate students.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time with university leadership to think about how we can reimagine our tuition levels and how we can extend financial aid more broadly to both domestic and international populations,” he said.
SPS is also working on a longer-term project with Vice President for Campus Life Eric Estes to “expand subsidized student housing for graduate populations,” Prasad added.
Grace Hu is a senior staff writer covering graduate student life. She is a sophomore from Massachusetts studying English and Neuroscience.
