UB's Graduate Student Association will elect two representatives to the New York State Student Assembly this Wednesday, the first in the organization's history.
The GSA's ability to elect two representatives, one for each 3,000 of UB's 6,618 full-time graduate students, was only recently brought to their attention by SUNY Trustee George Pape, leaving some question as to who holds responsibility for informing a student government of its right to representation at the state level.
Ritesh Patel, GSA programming coordinator and recently appointed Sub-Board I president, believes both NYSSA and the university failed to inform the GSA of its right to SUNY representation.
"The question is, is it that nobody [at UB] looked into it, or is it that NYSSA hasn't shown interest in graduate students?" asked Patel.
Both Patel and Pape believe SUNY's graduate division was responsible for relaying information to the GSA regarding representative elections and conference details.
At the March 6 GSA Senate meeting, NYSSA delegates will be nominated and elected by the 60 to 80 senators from graduate departmental, international and special-interest clubs. The delegates will attend the NYSSA Leadership Conference at the Buffalo Hyatt Hotel this April 12-15, along with UB's undergraduate NYSSA delegates and representatives from SUNY's 63 other campuses.
UB GSA President Janine Santiago said she and other executives were unaware that graduate students were represented at the NYSSA level.
"I thought the representation was more for undergraduates," said Santiago, who is in her second year as GSA president. "Our office manager, who has been here for almost 25 years, said she'd never heard of there being a NYSSA delegate."
Santiago said she hopes to see "someone who's very involved with their club and in their department" elected to each position. More importantly, however, she believes the delegates must keep GSA members aware of issues relevant to graduate students.
"All too often, students attend these conferences and have a wonderful experience, but then they come back with nothing to report on," said Santiago. "We need somebody who will bring important issues back to the floor."
Although Santiago said NYSSA representation will be primarily "a learning experience at first," Patel believes the addition of NYSSA delegates allows the GSA's "hot issue" of graduate teaching stipend levels to be addressed, along with concerns over the level of support for international graduate students.
"I feel right now that this could create some more awareness for such issues, including why the social sciences rank very low in the overall stipend levels," Patel said.
"International students as well, who every year increase in number, deserve to have a voice," he added.
Tami Dougherty, a graduate student in the department of counseling, school and educational psychology, said she was not aware of the issue, but that she felt "short-changed about [not] knowing about this issue. An e-mail or even a letter would have been nice."
Santiago said although stipend levels and state support "affect all of us, and is important information to have," the Graduate Student Union was more directly involved with such financial matters.
The GSA's major interests this year affect UB's graduate students specifically, according to Santiago. Their priorities include: sending more graduates to professional and academic conferences, as well as bringing more conferences to UB; creating a dissertation binding program for graduates to more widely distribute their work; funding research by graduates in their last year of study and extending support beyond their traditional nine-month stipend; and creating a peer editing program among graduates in response to members often having difficulty with finding help at UB's more undergraduate-focused resource centers, according to Santiago.
