Between 60 and 70 people gathered in Firestone plaza yesterday to criticize the University for not taking what some viewed as the necessary steps to provide sufficient housing for graduate students next year.
Graduate Student Government officers brought the housing question before the U-Council at its meeting earlier this week. At that meeting, University officials pledged to address the housing situation.
Nevertheless, graduate students at the protest yesterday continued to question the University's commitment to graduate education.
"The University should treat all of its students alike," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, GSG press secretary. He and other GSG leaders called for the University to provide adequate housing to meet the needs of the graduate student body.
Vice President and Secretary Thomas Wright '62 said yesterday the University is working to address graduate students' housing concerns.
"The objective here is to obtain housing for all graduate students who want it. That's the goal," Wright said. But he added that "housing . . . is an inherently complex issue."
Wright said he is wary of issuing any broad guarantee to provide housing for all graduate students because of the wide range of their housing needs.
Though 75 percent of graduate students currently are housed by the University, the process of finding housing at the start of this year was difficult because many students did not request housing until after the University's deadline.
Organized by Campus Activism at Princeton — formerly Graduate Students for Local Activism — the rally started at noon and lasted for more than one hour, participants said.
The rally was publicized by e-mail and word of mouth, said Jason Brownlee GS, CAP's executive board secretary.
Ramakrishnan said that because the graduate school centennial gala will take place today, he believed yesterday was a good time to voice graduate students' concerns.
"What we would really appreciate instead is actual housing," he said.
Following the U-Council meeting Monday, Provost Jeremiah Ostriker and Dean of the Graduate School John Wilson wrote a letter to GSG president Lauren Hale.
The letter explained that the University will be considering how to better accommodate graduate students' housing needs by increasing the number of available spaces for housing.
Vice President for Finance and Administration Richard Spies GS '72 said the committee planning the sixth residential college is already considering mixing graduate and undergraduate students in that building — an idea the GSG proposed.
"That's very much under consideration," Spies said, but the new residential college will be complete no earlier than 2004.
The University's short-term solution to the problem may be to redistribute existing housing and place graduates in the undergraduate dorms, Spies said.
Graduate students have also suggested that living costs be subsidized for those students who live in housing not owned by the University.
But Wright warned that this particular solution could adversely impact the local real estate market, possibly driving up rent prices and gobbling up much of the area's affordable living spaces that might otherwise be occupied by people not affiliated with the University.
Princeton is planning to form a committee of graduate students and administrators to discuss other possible solutions to the housing problem, Wright said.
Spies noted that limited finances are not the cause of the apparent housing shortage. "We are financially capable of paying for new housing and we've begun the planning for that," he said.
But construction of new residential buildings would take more than one year, according to Spies, and graduate students want housing for the upcoming year.
Ramakrishnan said, "I just hope we have plans to guarantee housing for graduate students next year."
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