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Syracuse University’s Graduate Student Organization filled four vacant positions in its internal senate during its Wednesday evening meeting. GSO also outlined its legislative agenda for the academic year and discussed changes to its Professional, Academic, and Creative Work Grant.

Rishabh Basu, Logan Fetterman, Samuel Prescott and Haoyan Zhou were unanimously elected to fill the senate positions. Senators come from each graduate program at SU, and graduate students from any area of study can fill the at-large seats, according to GSO’s website.

GSO did not fill any of its four open University Senate seats in the meeting. GSO is permitted 11 total seats in USen, according to USen bylaws. USen representatives attend monthly meetings with administrators, faculty and graduate representatives.

“We’re going to keep recruiting for these seats as long as they’re empty,” Kimmel said. “We want to make sure that as many graduate voices are represented within our assembly and within the University Senate as possible, but we can only do that if people actually have the willingness to step up and to serve.”

After the elections, Kimmel discussed their plan for GSO’s legislative agenda, which will include continued monitoring of budget reforms that were added last year. The reforms allowed GSO to end last year in a surplus for the first time in over a decade, Kimmel said, which they hope to repeat this year.

One of the budget reforms targets the PAC grant program, which provides funding to graduate students to offset costs of attending academic and professional conferences, according to its website. The grants are awarded based on merit and are meant to partially reimburse transportation, lodging, registration and membership expenses.

The program’s previous system provided these payments based on a scale ranging from $50 to $500. The new system, based on tiers, will award GSO members’ approved applications $600 grants for conferences. Kimmel said the additional funds, which started with the implementation of the new system, were a major reason why GSO operated at a surplus.

“For this coming year, (GSO) is trying to build cost-sharing relationships with different departments and entities,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think anyone enjoys paying (graduate student) fees, but when it’s also the only source of funding we can get, that puts us in a tough spot.”

With the additional money, the organization hopes to implement a yearly or bi-annual summit with the other student governance bodies on campus, Kimmel said. GSO also mentioned its plans to partner with the new “Life Together: Seeking the Common Good in A Diverse Democracy” initiative, led by Gretchen Ritter, SU’s former provost and current vice president for civic engagement and civil dialogue.

At the end of the meeting, GSO members shared a cake to celebrate the organization’s 57th semester on campus and outlined plans for its next meeting.

The next meeting will be on Nov. 6, where GSO will introduce the new legislative agenda. GSO will also continue to try to fill its USen seats at future meetings, Kimmel said.

Published on October 3, 2024 at 1:38 am

Contact Henry: hdaley@syr.edu