GSA drafts student bill of obligations, rights

Entering graduate students may not be overwhelmed by the myriad
of departmental and university policies if the Graduate Student
Association succeeds in getting a stamp of approval for its draft
of student academic rights and responsibilities.

The draft condenses graduate student policies of various
administrative bodies, such as the Graduate Division and the
Academic Senate, into a single document.

GSA President Charles Harless said the idea for the document
arose from graduate students not knowing what to do when having
problems with their departments. He said GSA hopes the document
will be useful because all the policies are put in the same
place.

GSA feels this would be a document students would use when they
first enter their programs to get a general idea of what goes on in
the university, he said.

The document, he said, would also be useful as a reference guide
for current students who are not sure about certain departmental or
university policies.

Harless added that he “sees it as a living document, one
that every year GSA officers will work with to update so that it
will always reflect the current state of affairs in graduate
student lives.”

The current draft has been presented to the Graduate Council
Committee on Degree Programs, and Harless said he is working on
some minor wording revisions the committee had suggested.

There are questions on whether the document should be viewed as
one whose provisions have to be enforced, or simply as a guide for
students, said John Richardson, associate dean of the Graduate
Division and a liaison to the committee.

“We still have to decide what will happen if professors or
students don’t do what the document says they should,”
he said.

“The principles of the document are what we all endorse,
but we also want it to be an effective and concretely useful
document for students,” said William Roy, chair of the
Graduate Council and member of the committee.

It is not yet clear how the document is going to be used if it
were approved, and whether or not the provisions inside it would
carry the weight of university regulations, he said.

Roy said the committee is very supportive of what GSA is trying
to do in bringing together all the information for students who
have problems and that this is a “very constructive
dialogue.”

“We were also pleased that the document includes both the
rights and responsibilities of graduate students … that it sees
the relationship between faculty and students as being
two-sided,” he said.