Grad students contest treatment

By Marcelle Richards
Daily Bruin Reporter

Abuses of power in graduate student and faculty relations is
neither new nor uncommon, yet due to the complexity of those
relations, many graduate students sacrifice their well-being to
preserve the peace.

The issue was brought to the attention of the Graduate Students
Association after departmental reports released last year revealed
trends of abuse within certain departments.

“There are conflicts over intellectual property, the
potential for exploitation, inappropriate use of power,” said
Jim Turner, assistant vice chancellor of the graduate division.
“A lot of times, students want to air their grievances but
want to remain anonymous. They don’t want anyone to know
they’re complaining because they think there may be
repercussions.”

The problems involved range from sexual harassment to
ideological differences to the absence of professors who are on
sabbaticals instead of teaching the courses graduate students need
to complete a degree.

On a lesser scale, abuses of power have included faculty asking
graduate students to babysit children or walk dogs, Turner
said.

“There are no immediate solutions to this,” he said.
“For the most part, these are sane human beings and they work
things out.”

As a regulating mechanism, the Graduate Council of the Academic
Senate assesses each department by reviewing them every eight
years.

The review team is composed of faculty from other departments
and other universities in an attempt to make the process more
objective. Occasionally, the reports reveal disturbing trends in
departments.

“There have been a couple of departments in which serious
problems have arisen that GSA considered an abuse of power,”
said Martin Griffin, GSA president and doctoral candidate in
English. “We’re talking about patterns of unacceptable
behavior.”

The Department of slavic languages and literatures was the
primary department of concern in the most recent eight-year
review.

“In slavic languages and literatures, this wasn’t an
isolated incident,” Turner said. “It was a pattern of
behavior that affected many students over several years.”

To preserve the anonymity of the students, Michael Heim, chair
of Slavic Languages and Literatures, declined to comment on the
specific nature of the situation.

“The students never expressed any dissatisfaction with the
level of education they were being given,” Heim said.
“The external committee of the eight-year review rated the
department among the top departments, if not the top, in the
country.”

“The graduate council voted unanimously to lift the
sanctions on the department,” he continued. “They felt
the department has dealt with the issue effectively.”

A collaboration between the department’s graduate student
representative and the GSA representative on the Graduate Council
has since manifested a procedure for graduate students to follow,
Heim said.

Complaints are first handled by the department chair, and may be
forwarded to the Ombuds office and then the graduate division if
problems are not resolved at the departmental level, he
continued.

According to Turner, the procedure has not been reflected by the
graduate division.

“I would think that’s not written in stone. The
department chair, Ombuds and the graduate division are all
resources, but it will vary; one size does not fit all,”
Turner said. “The general issue is for graduate students to
know there’s somewhere to go for a just hearing; any or all
may be pursued. It may be that the department chair is the
problem.”

Within the Slavic Languages and Literatures department, Heim
said the students have been responsive.

“I’ve personally assured them they can come to me
and that their cases will remain anonymous,” Heim said.
“And they have done so.”

While a complaint is occasionally directed to the graduate
dean’s office, there are likely many more that are not
reported, according to Turner.

“There’s still the question of whether students are
using these facilities as much as they should,” he said.

GSA’s support system for students stems from the GSA
Academic Affairs Commissioner on the executive board of the
Academic Senate and four representatives on the Graduate
Council.

“I would like GSA to be a place where graduate students
can go,” Griffin said. “From GSA’s point of view,
we’re not looking to interfere where we have no business or
where our presence isn’t wanted, but we will make whatever
resources we have available.”

“Graduate students work very much inside one department.
If something goes wrong in the department, that can be quite a big
problem for the graduate student,” he continued.
“Because of that, there’s a very natural sense in which
people don’t want to be seen as troublemakers. A lot of
people are nervous about bringing abuses to light.”

Issues of race and socio-economic status, at times, arise as
roots of conflicts between faculty and students.

“It’s sort of an old boys’ network, if you
have the same personality you get along,” said Afshin
Marashi, a history graduate student.

“The culture of academia is very white, male. If
you’re a person from a working class family or a person of
color, it’s harder to succeed because different rules apply.
It’s easier to be marginalized,” Marashi said.

Though he said he has not personally had any problems with
faculty, Marashi does not expect a resolution to materialize due to
the nature of the problems.

“I really have a hard time thinking there’s anything
they can do,” he said. “It’s hard for a
bureaucracy to change people’s personalities.”

UCLA currently has a code of conduct for faculty as well as a
system of internal controls ““ such as department chairs
““ to help keep relations running smoothly. Surveys are
administered to graduate students while their department is under
review and all doctoral graduates are handed exit surveys.

“Certainly UCLA has procedures for investigating and
sanctioning unprofessional behavior by faculty,” Griffin
said. “But people often don’t want to push things that
far. Senior faculty in a department can be very powerful and the
individual graduate student can feel rather powerless if a problem
comes up.”

UC Davis’ graduate student government has issued a
graduate student bill of rights, which has been in place for
several years, according to Turner.

Some graduate students feel the problem at UCLA may be lessened
by putting more emphasis on how well professors maintain their
relationship with students.

“Some people have good relationships with their advisers
because the adviser is nurturing,” Marashi said. “One
thing the university can do is encourage (faculty) to be more
caring. I think it might be a good idea to have a sensitivity
training course.”

In the meantime, GSA will continue to pursue the issue to
establish long-term improvements, Griffin said.

“We’re not trying to say every graduate student is
being abused, but there are cases that we think deserve
attention,” he said. “We don’t want to say,
“˜It’s all taken care of,’ because it’s
not.”