With fall semester in the books, the Charlatan spoke with the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) to see how much progress they have made in fulfilling their election promises.
PROMISE: The GSA executives wanted to expand the GSA health plan and explore options to reduce costs.
YES AND NO: GSA President Christina Muehlberger said the GSA has added more paramedical coverage to its health plan to include chiropractic, massage, physiotherapy, and psychology services.
While the cost of the health plan did rise this year, Muehlberger said the GSA negotiated for “the lowest rate we possibly could and based off the referendum results.”
Muehlberger said the GSA has begun looking into partnering with other graduate student unions to pool resources.
“We have started to investigate into that,” she said. “But it’s a process to get other grad locals together and under one health plan.”
PROMISE: Another pledge was to continue to support graduate students as academic workers.
YES: GSA and graduate students overwhelmingly backed a motion to add two voting seats in the Senate for contract instructors, Muehlberger said.
Muehlberger said the GSA has been working closely with CUPE 4600, the union representing contract instructors and teaching assistants.
“We’ve created a really good relationship with CUPE 4600,” she said.
Muehlberger also said the GSA is working with students and Carleton to make the process of assigning funding packages for certain graduate programs more transparent, following complaints that some of the packages were misleading.
PROMISE: The executives proposed to create a new and easily accessible GSA website.
YES: The new GSA website went up in July.
“We’ve gotten so much feedback on the website. It’s amazing,” Muehlberger said.
PROMISE: As a candidate, Muehlberger proposed to introduce a student-supervisor advocacy service to train graduate students on how to resolve conflicts with research supervisors.
NO: Muehlberger said a student-supervisor advocacy service has not been set up at Carleton, but the GSA is taking steps toward creating it.
“We’ve been in a lot of conversation with other universities that have one but it is a long process,” she said. “We have been taking steps to figuring out what it’d look like and taking to different partners at Carleton.”
PROMISE: Muehlberger also pledged to campaign for more non-commercial space for graduate students.
NO: Muehlberger said the GSA hasn’t launched or planned for any specific campaign around creating more non-commercial space for graduate students so far.
“I think that’s something we’re always doing in our work is trying to create spaces that treat students not just as consumers but we haven’t developed any specific campaign material around that,” she said.
PROMISE: GSA president Muehlberger ran on campaigning for regulating international student tuition fees at Carleton and fighting against tuition fee increases.
YES AND NO: Muehlberger said the GSA will be ramping up its efforts against rising tuition costs this semester when the Carleton Board of Governors votes on a budget framework that included a 3.3 per cent fee increase.
“This semester will be the semester where we mobilize our members to really put pressure on the Board,” she said.
The GSA plans to lobby the provincial government for a reduction in tuition fees.
“We do have a letter drafted for [Carleton President] Runte to send to the provincial government asking for a fully-funded reduction in tuition,” Muehlberger said.
A previous letter edited by the senior administration was rejected by Muehlberger and others at a previous board of governors meeting. The new letter has not been approved by the board of governors or the senior administration.
Muehlberger said the GSA has not increased the amount of scholarships, awards and grants for graduate students.
She added the GSA has been working on budget proposals that won’t include tuition fee increases to be presented to the Board of Governors and a campaign for regulating international student tuition fees at Carleton.
Although the GSA is campaigning toward lower tuition, tuition is likely to increase by 3.3 per cent next year, according to estimates from a recent Board of Governors meeting.
