The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) has launched a petition demanding improved mental health services for graduate students.
According to Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, the GSA’s vice-president (operations), the petition arose from discussions between executives and the GSA’s Political Action Committee. Owusu-Akyeeah said these improvements are something the GSA has been working on for years.
She said the GSA decided to launch a petition with five demands to address a “mental health crisis” at Carleton, and show that graduate students especially need adequate services to address the issues they’re going through.
The petition’s demands are: hiring a counsellor specifically for graduate students, providing a waiting room and counselling space that graduate students can access that is separate from the undergraduate space, funding a peer support program for graduate students that is run by graduate students, providing training and workshops on mental health for teaching assistants, and extending assessments for threats to mental well-being, that are currently conducted for full-time staff, to include graduate student workers (including teaching assistants, services assistants, and contract instructors).
According to Owusu-Akyeeah, the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs revoked its promise to the GSA to introduce a counsellor just for graduate students because it needed to make sure this was something that graduate students want.
Wesley Petite, an executive member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 4600, and a teaching assistant, said he agrees with the petition. He said CUPE 4600—which represents contract instructors and teaching assistants at Carleton—and the GSA worked together to come up with the last two demands.
“There’s a dual task of being a student and being a worker,” Petite said. “At times, that can lead to you working for your academic supervisor, which then leads to less of an ability to speak out against instructor practices that do not adhere to the collective agreement.”
The collective agreement outlines the rights of workers, and CUPE 4600 bargains for it to be renewed every four years, he said.
“Sometimes, the instructor won’t respect those rules, and a student has to worry about their academic standing not being implicated by their complaining about that,” Petite said.
Maureen Murdock, the director of Health and Counselling Services (HCS), said in an email that she is aware of the petition. She wrote that embedded counsellors might not be the best or only option to address graduate students’ mental health concerns.
“My initial thought is that the petition is premature,” Murdock said. “I believe that the GSA needs to engage with HCS to discuss their issues first and get some input from the counsellors working with grad students and the grad students using the counselling services.”
According to her, counselling is most effective when the counsellor and the client establish a strong therapeutic alliance, and that specialization can reduce accessibility.
The petition, which launched on Feb. 1, had garnered more than 300 signatures as of publication, according to Owusu-Akyeeah.
She also said the petition will keep going for as long as the GSA sees fit, whether until the end of the semester or until the next meeting with the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
