A new crop of graduate student leaders has been selected to take over the reins of the Graduate Student Associations Council for the upcoming academic year.
During the April 2 and April 16 meetings at the Graduate Student Center, the 2002-2003 GSAC executive board was elected by its general body. School of Arts and Sciences graduate student Elise Carpenter will fill the position of president. Carpenter served as the vice president for SAS affairs over the past year.
Other returning GSAC executive board members include Jeff Casello, who will now hold the position of member-at-large, and Elizabeth Gelfand as vice president for communications. This past year, Casello was vice president for communications and Gelfand was one of three vice presidents for student affairs.
Outgoing President Darren Glass said he is excited about the new group, saying that they are all active participants and "represent a wide variety of graduate groups."
Newly elected Vice President of Student Affairs Max Dionisio had similar feelings.
"I am thrilled to be working with the new exec board," Dionisio said in an e-mail statement. "We have what I think is a great working relationship, and I know that everyone on the executive is fully committed to GSAC and the members of the Ph.D. community at Penn."
He added that he believes the new officers will "bring a wealth of experiences and ideas which will only help to better serve doctoral students at Penn."
This year, GSAC introduced "Navigating the Dissertation," a weekly series of workshops aimed at helping graduate students in their transition from students to researchers. A significant amount of energy and resources was also spent establishing the Graduate Student Center at the beginning of this year.
"I think that the 'Navigating the Dissertation' workshop... in collaboration with GSC, is an excellent example of the kind of work I would like GSAC to continue next year," Carpenter said in an e-mail statement.
GSAC also conducts an annual study of the cost of living for graduate students in Philadelphia. The survey results are submitted to the administration for consideration when determining stipend levels.
"I am very excited about this project and hope to expand it so that we can compare the cost of living at Penn with several of our peer institutions," Dionisio said.
"GSAC has always played a role in identifying graduate students' needs," Carpenter added. "I am particularly interested in identifying what graduate students need in terms of support for research and teaching. With this information we can, in collaboration with the GSC and other graduate-oriented groups, develop programs for supporting graduate students."
GSAC announced last month that it had officially taken a neutral stance on the issue of graduate student unionization, a campaign which is currently a controversial issue at Penn and throughout the country. Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board last December for the right to hold union elections. Preliminary hearings concerning the petition concluded last month, and GET-UP members and University administrators are now awaiting the NLRB's decision.
Graduate students at Tufts University recently won the right to hold union elections, and Temple University negotiated a tentative contract with the Temple University Graduate Students' Association last week.
But Carpenter said that despite the importance of the issue, it is not the place of GSAC to take an official stance on the matter.
"I do not see GSAC's stance of neutrality changing soon," Carpenter said. "GSAC wishes to provide a forum where graduate students feel comfortable openly discussing unionization no matter what their views on the matter. GSAC has been able to be a place where union advocates and students with concerns over unionization can voice their opinions to each other."
Glass added that he believes it would be difficult for the diverse GSAC board to agree on a stance to take.
"Next year's executive board contains members with vastly different opinions on the issue of unionization, which represent the spectrum of opinions felt across campus," he said.
