“We have not decided definitely to go ahead with grad student sign-in, mostly because we still need to have a town hall meeting between the membership and the grad school board to discuss the issue,” club president Andrew Chong ’11 said. But, he added, “I very much hope that we will be able to accept grad students as Terrans this spring.”
The idea has been “bouncing around for a little bit,” he noted.
Chong explained that after early discussion, “we thought it would be kind of fun to poke around with the idea of grad students as members,” so officers sent out a poll in late October to gauge membership opinion.
“Definitely in the poll it came out a clear majority for taking grad students,” Chong said. “In general, the personal support I’ve seen for it has been very, very strong.”
There have also been some vocal opponents to the plan, Chong added, conceding that “they have good reasons for that.”
Opponents’ primary concern, Chong explained, is that accepting graduate student members would result in fewer undergraduate members than if the club continued its current policy, since the club already tends to fill up in either the first or second round of sign-in.
But Chong said this potential drawback could be offset by plans to increase membership.
“This year, we are going to expand our undergrad student membership even beyond what they originally were,” he explained. “Our undergrad membership will go up no matter what, and our graduate membership, if we decide to take them, will just add to the experience.”
But Terrace member David Shea ’11 said he thought the proposal of admitting graduate students “was a short-lived idea within the outgoing Terrace officer core.”
“A number of undergraduate members, such as myself, made the point very early that such designs would detract from our club’s focus on undergraduates,” Shea said in an e-mail. “As we quickly found out, the plans would not take any spots away from potential sophomores ... but many still think the idea would undermine unity among the undergraduate population.”
Howard Helms ’56, chair of Terrace’s graduate board, said that before the change would be adopted, “Andrew has to socialize it to make sure that the club really agrees with it.”
“I think it’s going to require a little more thought ... I don’t even know if there are graduate students interested,” Terrace member Phillis Heitjan ’11 said.
Helms noted that Terrace had accepted graduate students in the past, but the contingent was always small. Chong said he anticipates that between 10 and 20 graduate students would join the club, but he cautioned that the estimate is still very rough. “We really have no idea beyond some friends we already have who would actually be joining,” Chong explained.
Graduate students “would go through offerings, pickups, initiations — just like every other member,” Chong said. “The idea is that we wouldn’t want to create a second-class member. If they were to join, they would join and become a full member just like everybody else.”
Graduate student membership could augment the membership’s institutional memory, Chong added, since undergraduates are in the club for a little more than two years, while graduate students could be members for five or six years.
“They would be lasting members people see time and again,” he explained. “They would be around the club and just remember how things were back in the day.”
He also expressed hope that the policy would help build ties between graduate and undergraduate students at the University.
“I feel that there’s this really artificially constructed barrier between undergraduate students and graduate students,” Chong said.
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