Grad students elected to U-Council

Members of the Graduate Student Government elected five new representatives to the Council of the Princeton University Community at the last GSG meeting on April 18.

Among the six candidates, Tamar Friedmann (Physics), Lauren Hale (WWS) and Jim Vere (Economics) retained their seats. Lior Silberman (Math) and Donnell Butler (Sociology) won new positions for the upcoming year. Matt Hindman (Politics) and Matt Fouse (Politics) will assume ex-officio positions as parliamentary secretary and chair of the GSG.

The CPUC — also known as the U-Council — comprisesundergraduate and graduate students, administrators, faculty, staff and alumni delegates. Graduate student U-Councilors attend monthly CPUC meetings, hold issue meetings among themselves and attend GSG Assembly meetings in order to stay in touch with the issues that concern graduate students.

This was the second annual election held by the Graduate Student Government. In prior years, Associate Dean of the Graduate School Joy Montero appointed graduate students to U-Council seats.

As an appointed U-Council representative, Jim Vere pushed through amendments giving the GSG the right to elect its representatives.

"It is important to give graduate students a direct voice," he said. "I've been really encouraged by the fact that graduate students now have the opportunity to voice their concerns and are being heard. In the past, the GSG had concerns, but they weren't listened to."

Hindman said he believes elected representatives make a difference for graduate students. "There is no question that having elected representatives has greatly increased our voice on the U-council. This year has been very successful in presenting issues to the administration and receiving a response from them."

"Representatives have more legitimacy with the administration if they are elected by the GSG assembly than they would if they were just a random graduate student," he said. "It requires a different sort of person to fill it and that person is likely to take the position more seriously."

GSG chair Matt Fouse said the outgoing GSG executive board presented a graduate student life initiative, including changes in housing, healthcare and dental benefits, transportation and post-enrollment status. He said he expects the new U-Councilors will continue to work on these issues.

"There has been a decent amount of movement on these fronts." Fouse said. "We're working with the administration to extend dental and eye benefits that we can buy into as well as new ideas about parking and shuttles."

"The final big thing that no progress has yet been made on is post-enrollment, a situation that a majority of graduate students find themselves in. We want to give them an opportunity to pay minimal tuition and to retain student status so that they can continue to have loans deferred and can access the gym and housing. This is one of the most pressing issues," he said.

Hale said she believes next year is an especially important time for graduate student activism. In her statement of interest she wrote, "Next year will be crucial in terms of articulating our needs, since we will have a new president who will be interested in our experiences."