Working side-by-side To the Editor:
On March 4, Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania held a rally to express their displeasure that the administration "doesn't listen enough" to graduate students ("GET-UP gives grades to U. Administrators at rally," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 3/5/02).
The question of whether unionization is the best move for graduate students at Penn is a complicated issue and one which I will not try to tackle in this letter. However, I feel it necessary to dispel this myth that the University is disinterested in listening to the graduate students on campus.
As President of Graduate Student Associations Council, I can report that the board members and I meet regularly with administrators, including but not limited to President Judith Rodin, Provost Robert Barchi, Deputy Provost Peter Conn and Associate Dean Joseph Farrell. In these meetings, we discuss a wide variety of issues that face graduate students including health insurance and working conditions, the two issues with which GET-UP is particularly interested.
We also discuss things such as teaching assistant training programs, the quality of the library and many other issues. I know that Graduate and Professional Students Assembly officers regularly have similar meetings, as well.
Graduate students sit on many committees campus-wide, from Student Health Insurance Advisory Committee to pluralism, safety and security to parking violations. This year, the Provost invited graduate students to sit on every subcommittee working on the new strategic plan.
Some graduate students believe that the administration does not act upon our suggestions and in our interests in the way that it should.
And some graduate students think that a union would be listened to differently than the current venues we have in which to discuss these issues.
They may or may not be right. But for GET-UP to claim that the administration has no interest in listening to us at all is not only wrong, but it is insulting -- to the administration and to those graduate students who put countless hours into working with the administration to improve all of our lives.
Darren Glass
Mathematics Ph.D. Student
The writer is president of the Graduate Student Associations Council. Real world health care To the Editor:
Chris Leahy's comments on Student Health ("Appreciate Student Health," DP, 2/26/02) speak to a much larger problem within the graduate and professional student community here at Penn.
There are some graduate/professional students who seek to make Penn a better place for all, and some who want to make the administration more comfortable with their own decisions through sycophantic diatribes that do nothing but create cleavages.
Leahy maybe right that SHS is doing an adequate job, but he misses the "real world" point. In the "real world" people enjoy "real" health insurance plans. In the "real world," people who have quality health insurance don't attend "clinics." In the "real world," people have the right to demand better services for their premium dollar.
Maybe when Mr. Leahy enters the "real world" (and I would imagine it would be his first taste of it) he will have a different perspective.
Justin Wert
Political Science Ph.D. student
