With the passage of a resolution last Tuesday, graduate students at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry will now have greater representation in SUNY’s Student Assembly.

The resolution, authorized by the SUNY Board of Trustees, enacted emergency rulemaking to add graduate student representation in the SUNY Student Assembly to many SUNY campuses, including ESF. The ratification was necessary to allow for the new rules to be in effect for the April 8 and 9 conference of the assembly. 

With the resolution, ESF will have graduate representation and voting rights at the conference for the first time, said Lewis Grove, president of ESF’s Graduate Student Association. SUNY Albany, Binghamton, University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University already had graduate student representation in the Student Assembly, he said.

‘ESF is an important campus in the SUNY system. It only makes sense that we are represented on the SUNY level,’ Grove said.

Grove said the resolution may have been enacted to increase SUNY campus solidarity against budget cuts. Although ESF has endorsed the budget cuts to the SUNY system, the SUNY Student Assembly is against the cuts, Grove said. He said he is not sure what exactly will be on the agenda at the conference, but voting on a resolution to condemn the cuts is likely.

‘What that vote means or how much we are going to exercise that power, I don’t know yet,’ Grove said.

While the budget cuts could mean tuition hikes, most graduate students wouldn’t be affected because many of them are financially supported through research or graduate assistantships, Grove said.

The speed with which the SUNY Board of Trustees authorized the resolution simply seems like a way to start getting greater graduate student representation faster, said Elizabeth Miller, an environmental studies graduate student.

‘It’s always a little odd when things are passed really quickly like that,’ Miller said. ‘But there doesn’t seem to be any harm in the speed. It doesn’t seem like a cloak and dagger, fly-by-night sort of thing.’ 

Despite ESF already having a Graduate Student Association, Miller said the new representation included in the resolution can only bring about good things. She hopes the increased representation will help engage the graduate student body and encourage students to leave their offices, take a break from research and get involved, she said. 

The biggest challenge to this resolution will be finding graduate students who have time to dedicate to the position, Miller said. 

‘I hope whoever becomes a representative makes it a serious part of their graduate career,’ Miller said. ‘If it feels transitory or lacks an identity and a clear voice for the constituents, it would harm instead of help.’

Scott Shannon, dean of instruction and graduate studies at ESF, said the SUNY Board of Trustees is trying to recognize the importance of graduate students in the SUNY system, something ESF already does.

‘We recognize that our graduate students are an extremely important part of our student body at ESF, which is fairly unusual within the SUNY system, as our graduate students make up close to a third of the student body on campus,’ Shannon said.

Graduate students contribute to SUNY’s overall mission as much, if not more, than undergraduate students, especially at a research-based campus like ESF, Shannon said. The shift toward more graduate student representation will allow for the group to have more direct contact with the SUNY administration, he said.

‘It will provide a voice at the highest level in the system for organizations like our GSA,’ Shannon said. ‘Having a voice directly in Albany will definitely help graduate students.’ 

jlsiart@syr.edu

Published on March 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm