As discussed Monday, 26 February 2007.

February 18, 2007

Dear President Skorton, Chairman Meinig, and the Cornell Board of Trustees,

Re: GPSA Annual Report, March 2007

As President of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, it is my pleasure to present to you this annual report on our activities. The GPSA has had an active and exciting year and continues to work hard to represent graduate and professional students at Cornell, especially through a renewed focus on community-building. We are very excited to share the results of these activities with Cornell’s administration.

First, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the Board of Trustees for their favorable reception of the joint GPSA and SA resolution on the Student-Elected Trustee seats. This issue of equal representation has been of concern to the GPSA for many years, but it was thanks to the co-operation between both Assemblies’ leaderships, as well as the hard work of Student Elected Trustees Mitarotonda and Ye, that that the change could be jointly proposed, appropriately debated, and passed. We are firm in our belief that this change represents a positive step for student representation on the Board and will bring a great benefit to both student communities, and we look forward to the review in four years’ time that will hopefully renew and strengthen this commitment to our two constituencies.

In addition to the Trustee Resolution the GPSA has undertaken several other actions. In our first meeting of the year we passed a resolution supporting President Skorton’s decision to divest from the Sudan (R.1); we have since then engaged publicly with a number of campus-wide issues of concern. Many members of the graduate and professional student body are engaged in intensive discussions surrounding the Krause Report: grads are vocal and insightful participants at open forums, the Cornell Law Students Association even forming a taskforce to review the document and produce an official response letter to the CJC detailing concerns and suggestions. Our delegates continue to be active members of the Comprehensive Master Plan discussions and workshops, as we believe a campus inclusive of graduate and professional student needs is vital to our academic and general wellbeing. Also, we have recently allocated a small sum to support Slope Day and have promoted graduate student members to their Steering Committee (R.6; R.10); we hope this will encourage graduate and professional student involvement in this campus-wide event, ultimately widening its appeal and improving its tenor. And we continue to work closely with the Big Red Barn and enjoy their outstanding programming—although, unfortunately, at the time of writing, this central feature in the Cornell graduate student landscape has closed due to structural instability, much to many students’ dismay.

Overall, however, the driving concern for the GPSA this year has been one of building a cohesive graduate and professional student community. To do so, we have tried to position our organization as a central conduit for cross-campus events and information. We energized communications with our constituency with a new bi-weekly email newsletter which includes not only GPSA news and events but also those of our funded organizations: this currently reaches almost 10% of the graduate student body. Our Events Committee has continued to put on the popular Grad Night Out series in local Ithaca nightspots, and our much anticipated GradBall ‘07 is expected to eclipse last year’s sold out event. From the GPSA’s perspective, however, one of our most successful events this year was hosting members of the Board at the Tell Grad’s It’s Friday (TGIF) weekly social. We received great feedback from the students who attended—and from several Trustees too! We certainly hope that the Board will consider attendance at such events as part of future meetings to deepen their engagement with our constituency.

The year has not been without controversy, however. A central issue of concern to the GPSA was Campus Life’s decision to place undergraduate tenants in Hasbrouck Housing complex in their push to complete the final phases of the Residence Life Initiative. Hasbrouck’s vibrant family-friendly environment makes it one of the few successful graduate student communities at Cornell, and the imposition of undergraduates was seen as a threat to this community’s survival. The GPSA worked closely with both Campus Life and the Hasbrouck Residents’ Association to resolve this conflict and in a November resolution (R.3), the GPSA stipulated clearly that while a limited number of undergraduates would be permissible in Hasbrouck, these residents must be moved by the fall of 2009. We also suggested Campus Life work closely with our Housing Advisory Council and provide additional services, assistance and programming to support the Hasbrouck community during this difficult time. We understand that this is one of the University’s growing pains and are willing to work with Campus Life over the next year to ensure that this is a smooth yet clearly temporary arrangement.

The Hasbrouck situation has brought to the fore a ‘big picture’ issue, however: there is a growing crisis in graduate community at Cornell. Several deeply interconnected issues compromise the quality of graduate student life, and may even build antagonistic relationships between students and university departments. For example, the recent results of the T-GEIS survey confirm what the GPSA has maintained for years: that parking for grads is insufficient and that fees are prohibitively high even when parking is required by their professional program (i.e. Veterinary Medicine). But simply focusing on Transportation ignores another root of the problem: poor on-campus graduate housing options drive grads to live farther away from campus, where we are constrained by the simply unaffordable student parking pass ($650+/year) and a public transit system which does not run during the hours when it is most needed to get home from the lab or the library. Infrastructure to support exchange among graduate students is also severely limited: on a social and intellectual level, grads tend to stay siloed within their departments or schools, and professional students are even further distanced from central interactions in largely self-sufficient buildings on the fringes of campus. In short, graduate students—one of the most diverse and intellectually engaged constituencies on campus—lack an overall sense of community. This leads to a systemic disengagement that we believe undermines Cornell’s academic goals.

The GPSA believes strongly that none of these issues can be treated in a vacuum, isolated from each other or from discussion with other campus communities: an integrated approach is essential. Further, a pro-active and visionary approach can bring these interconnected elements together in conversation, moving away from reacting to individual problems and towards proposing innovative, global solutions. We thus propose that it is time for Cornell University to take action on these issues and discuss actively and meaningfully what kind of graduate student community we would like to foster on campus.

This March, the GPSA will present our Graduate Community Initiative to the President and other members of the Cornell Administration in the hopes of beginning a conversation about the graduate and professional student experience at Cornell. This document takes an integrated and communitystrengthening approach to the interconnected components of graduate student life. As part of the Initiative’s central goals, my Assembly has identified three core requests that we will respectfully submit to the University for consideration:

� That Cornell invest in constructing an expanded Graduate Student Center that can better accommodate and foster both academic and social interactions among Graduate and Professional Students;

� That Cornell focus and develop a Graduate Resource Center, co-located with the Student Center, that brings together teaching, mentorship, personal and career resources for graduate students and their families; and,

� That Cornell explore options for integrating the graduate and professional student experience, taking interdisciplinarity a step further by expanding possibilities for crossdepartmental collaboration and student development;

The collaboration around the Graduate Community Initiative has been extraordinary: the entire Graduate and Professional Student Assembly took part in formulating this document, including our larger Council of Representatives. As an Assembly, we are very excited about the possibilities that this document presents and the discussions we hope will follow. For example, such an Initiative could significantly improve campus diversity, degree finishing times, post degree success and general quality of life—and attract top quality students to Ithaca. Perhaps in ten years’ time, a prospective graduate student will choose and embrace Cornell as their intellectual home with the same fervor as an undergraduate, thanks to the beautiful on-campus graduate residences populated with students from around the world; the unwavering support of a Resource Center that can even help to locate job opportunities for grad spouses and daycare for their children; and of course, the lively, bustling and hub of their dedicated Student Center. We look forward to working with our Administration and the Board of Trustees to see such an exciting vision take shape.

I am excited to discuss this Initiative and our other activities with you at the upcoming Board meeting in March. In the meanwhile, should you have specific questions, I direct you to our website, http://www.assembly.cornell.edu/GPSA for complete resolutions, minutes and other information. Let me also take this moment to thank you for the opportunity to represent my constituency, and to work with such outstanding partners in this University’s Administration: from Board members to Vice Presidents, Deans to Provosts, and of course our new President. Such support, vision and leadership is truly inspirational, and we look forward to our continued collaboration.

Sincerely,
Janet Vertesi
President, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly
2006–2007