At its Tuesday meeting, the Graduate Student Government (GSG) approved the re-establishment of Assembly Committees and faced questions from students over budget priorities — particularly high spending on the Ivy+ Leadership Summit compared to categories like Health, Diversity and Inclusion, and Academic Affairs.
Vice President of Internal Affairs Jan Ertl GS began the meeting by holding a vote to re-pass the resolution to establish Assembly Committees, which are teams of graduate students that address priorities like Academic Affairs and Campus Relations. The resolution had previously received unanimous support via an asynchronous vote.
“Technically, the vote to establish them was held asynchronously, and somebody pointed out that for asynchronous votes, there’s a higher threshold for quorum,” said Ertl.
Since not enough inactive seats voted asynchronously, Ertl held the vote synchronously during the recent meeting, where it passed unanimously with one abstention.
The next item on the agenda was the confirmation of Assembly Committee nominations for Transportation, Academic Affairs, Campus Relations, Financial Oversight, Budget Planning, and Constitution and Rules. All nominees for these roles were confirmed unanimously.
The most heated part of the meeting came during a presentation from Treasurer Seraya Jones-Nelson GS, when a student raised concern that more money was spent on the Ivy+ Leadership Summit — a yearly gathering of graduate student governments from Ivy+ institutions to discuss accomplishments and challenges — than on categories like Health, Diversity and Inclusion, or Academic Affairs.
“I still am a little bit baffled by why our spending on Ivy+ Summit was so high,” asked the audience member.
In response, GSG Vice President Caridad Estrada GS shared that spending on the Ivy+ Leadership Summit was likely higher this year because GSG was able to take its entire Executive Board to the summit as opposed to smaller numbers in years past.
During the presentation, Jones-Nelson highlighted the total budget of $83,000 from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, and announced that the overall spend so far was $31,565.79, with the highest expenditures on Special Events and the Social Chair budget.
In response to the seemingly low spending on Diversity and Inclusion, GSG President Amari Tankard GS added, “Advocacy and outreach requires active voice, and that is not always reflected in the fiscal spending you see here.”
From there, members of the Executive Board presented a debrief on the Ivy+ Leadership Summit from earlier in the year, which is typically attended by all Ivy League institutions and peers like the University of Chicago or MIT.
“We come together and discuss the current state of affairs for graduate student governments in those institutions,” said Estrada. “This is extremely useful because it works as leverage for us when we’re advocating for you guys when we go to our administrators.”
“We all shared our housing situation, our stipend rates. Princeton is well above any of the other Ivy+ institutions,” Estrada added.
She further noted that she learned about how emergency funds for international students are being funded at other graduate institutions to negotiate for similar funds at Princeton.
Tankard also shared that at the Ivy+ Summit, she learned that peer institutions are moving to incorporate student feedback into performance metrics for faculty, with Harvard and Columbia including student letters in tenure decisions. She expressed hope for policies like these to be implemented in Princeton’s Graduate School.
Princeton will host the Ivy+ Leadership Summit in 2027.
David Estrada is a News contributor for the 'Prince'. He is from Los Angeles, California and can be reached at de8214[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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