Dear President Skorton,

I am pleased to pass along to you GPSA Resolution 17, passed at the April 8th GPSA meeting. Resolution 17, “A Resolution Regarding Graduate Funding and Tuition,” is intended to raise awareness of two significant issues facing a large number of graduate students. Evan Cortens and his co-sponsors identified significant concerns in Humanities that precipitated the resolution, but the GPSA felt it important to amend the resolution to affect all graduate students.

First, current policy makes it difficult for students without tuition funding to remain in Ithaca and use the library. For many international students in particular, it is virtually impossible. Second, the treatment of external awards is uneven across campus. Some departments will extend the total number of funding years, while others will simply treat an external award as a replacement for existing Cornell funding. In Resolution 17, the GPSA calls on the university to address these concerns and offers some specific suggestions, without requesting a particular solution.

This resolution has already been transmitted to Deans Knuth, Allen, Notaro, and Wicker as well as Provost Fuchs. I hope that Resolution 17 can spur a discussion regarding this important issue for the graduate student community. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding Resolution 17.

All the best, Mitch