GAPSA condemns Yale admin.

By an overwhelming vote of 11 to 0 with five abstentions, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly passed a resolution last night condemning the Yale University administration's actions against Yale teaching assistants. At GAPSA's first meeting of the year, Arts and Sciences doctoral student and GAPSA First Vice Chairperson Surya Ghosh motioned to bring this issue up for discussion. Twenty minutes of discussion followed, during which representatives from different graduate schools expressed their views and questioned each other's position regarding the Yale situation. Most members disapproved of Yale's actions. "What Yale did was totally unacademic and unethical," said Nursing graduate student and Executive Board member Johanna Swift. "It's certainly not anything an Ivy League university or any university should do." Ghosh said he agreed. "The debate is not whether [the Yale TAs] have the right to strike or the right to unionize," he said. "The motion is about what Yale did was wrong." Although GAPSA Chairperson Victor Prince, a second-year Wharton graduate student, favored passing the resolution, he asked fellow members to consider reasons opposing the resolution. Prince listed three reasons for not passing the resolution. The first was that the majority of the information GAPSA received came from Yale graduate students' point of view. Second, he mentioned the possible interference of the resolution with the internal affairs of Yale. Finally, the fact that University President Judith Rodin was a former Yale faculty member and administrator was brought up for discussion. According to Prince, the vote marked the first time an Ivy League graduate student association has passed a resolution condemning another institution's actions. Last night's resolution was based on a similar statement passed by the University of California, Santa Barbara, according to Ghosh. The discussion ended with Prince moving to take a vote on the resolution. Ghosh said GAPSA will post a copy of the resolution on various newsgroups and on the group's web page. Additional copies will also be sent to Rodin, Provost Stanley Chodorow and Yale President Richard Levin. Also at last night's meeting, GAPSA discussed individual school reports, social activities and its continuing attempts at gaining space for graduate students in the Perelman Quadrangle. Prince announced to the body that the Undergraduate Assembly recently endorsed GAPSA's endeavor to request campus space for graduate students to socialize. And School of Social Work graduate student and Special Projects Chairperson Koli Banik highlighted upcoming graduate social events sponsored by GAPSA, and encouraged representatives to advertise within their respective schools. GAPSA's first social event of the year was happy hour at the Gold Standard last Friday. The next event will be an ice skating party tonight from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.