Current Budget Priorities Committee Chair Jim Holstun offered his resignation to Faculty Senate Chair Philip Glick on Tuesday night.
Glick announced that he accepted Holstun’s resignation and thanked him for his service during Wednesday’s Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting.
Holstun, an English professor, said he would serve as BPC chair until the end of the academic year, and offered his resignation because he was unsure of when his term ended due to unclear senate bylaws.
“The Senate website is unclear on this, so I wanted to be clear –– I am plum tuckered out, and want to do other things,” Holstun wrote in an email.
Holstun went on to commend graduate students’ efforts at raising stipends, which he said was the “real story” and called the efforts “the most significant labor action at UB since the late 1980s and the formation of the Graduate Students Employees Union.”
“It is a great privilege to teach at a university with graduate students like this. It makes me proud to be at UB to think about them,” Holstun wrote.
Holstun wrote he believes the stipends should have been raised two years ago when the Living Stipend Movement formed. But he is grateful to his colleagues on the Budget Priorities Committee for their “patient hard work through the last six months.”
Holstun said he hopes the Faculty Senate approves the resolution to create a committee with representation from faculty, administration and members of the graduate student body — which will decide on ways to increase graduate stipends.
“If the Faculty Senate approves the resolution authored by the Senate Budget Priorities Committee and approved by the FSEC, we will be on the road to a stronger, smarter, and more responsible UB,” Holstun wrote.
Tanveen Vohra is a co-senior news editor and can be reached at Tanveen.Vohra@ubspectrum.com and on Twitter @TanveenUBSpec.
Tanveen Vohra is a former senior news editor and covered international relations and graduate student protests.
