UA Graduate Students Prepare Grad Student Bill of Rights October 28, 2009 | AZPM

Story and Photo by Clayton Norman

Amid talks of budget cuts, deficits, and belt-tightening at the University of Arizona some graduate students have begun to wonder about the future of their programs and their funding. Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) president David Talenfeld is addressing those concerns by working with UA faculty and administration to create a graduate student bill of rights. AZPM news spoke with Talenfeld last week to discuss the process.

How did the idea for a graduate student bill of rights come about?

Well, it’s a common practice around the country at institutions like ours. Most of them have a graduate student bill of rights and responsibilities or something akin to that. I know that on campus here it’s been an effort for at least the past three or four years and probably longer. And unfortunately there hasn’t been the urgency on the part of the administration or the organizational skills on the part of the students to make it happen.

But the current environment with budget cuts at the university and with a lot of fears and rumors circulating I think is causing everybody to see that now’s the time to reassure the students in a meaningful way.

How long has the graduate student bill of rights been in the works?

Well, it was still on our plate from last year. Last year’s council actually approved a bill of rights, drafted it, spent many hours compiling it and I think failed, sort of at the end to phrase it in a way that was mutually acceptable to the students and the administrators. I think one of the focuses of my administration is going to be just trying to reach that accord and being able to tell students who come to me with these really devastating academic and personal issues that they have certain, codified rights and responsibilities and they can view them in a centralized place both on our website and on the grad college’s website and that they also have a grievance body with 50 percent student representation so that ultimately, if an issues is severe enough to rise to the highest level of the university—students as well as administrators and faculty will weigh in on it and they won’t be, sort of, unilaterally shot down by more powerful forces in mysterious darkened rooms.

So, up to now there was no apparatus to handle these kinds of issues?

Well, there has been and that’s the interesting thing-- I think most students don’t know about it or know how it works or know who to contact in order to better understand the processes. There are various bodies which address all sorts of different grievances and that’s part of the reason it has been so challenging to pursue an undertaking of this magnitude because we don’t want to step on anybody’s toes least of all the university legal department or certain boards that are responsible for sexual harassment and discrimination issues. So putting it all into a single document that refers people to all the right bodies is very challenging, but I think that its absolutely necessary in order to bolster the existing infrastructure that we have.

Is it coincidental that the graduate student bill of rights has become such a priority for the GPSC during a year in which massive budget cuts have been announced for university spending?

I had the opportunity to go up to the state capitol and chat with Michael Hunter who is the senior finance analyst at the state senate and unfortunately the situation is abysmal. And everybody understands that there are no easy solutions at this point. It is a kind of confluence of dire economic factors that only occurs every 75 years or so and everyone has to make sacrifices and what the students were feeling was that they were being asked to bear a disproportionate share of that burden. So this is so important now because it is a gesture from the administration, from the faculty that says “We are listening to you, we are giving you an official role, we are facilitating your input and we aren’t going to allow you to be abused. For instance, because there aren’t enough of you and we’re asking you to work an unprecedented number of hours or we’re not going to fund you adequately or provide you with adequate technology or supplies.” So it’s a powerful statement backed up by, you know, fingers crossed—I’m optimistic that it’ll be backed up by concerted efforts on the parts of all the stakeholders involved.

What are going to be the main points of the graduate student bill of rights?

Well, for me, I think it sort of outlines all the various roles and statements of principal regarding graduate and professional students both in a teaching and in a student capacity and then it will include links to other relevant campus documents as well bodies and officials who will be in a position to direct students when they do have an issue. One of those bodies will of course the GPSC we’re hoping that we’ll be in a better position next year to direct students with these very serious issues.

How do you go about writing a graduate student bill of rights?

Oh boy. There are a lot of committees, there is a lot of argument, there’s lots of negotiation, there are many many iterations. Fortunately for me this has been going on for several years now and I think that the document that we have inherited is already fairly comprehensive. So I think that what my job is going to be is to edit it in such a way that it conforms to faculty and administrator expectations and legal requirements while not deviating significantly from the meaningful principals that the students want and need for the university to live up and to be the kind of forward-thinking, enlightened institution we know it can be.

Sounds difficult.

Sure, but I don’t mean to overemphasize that point. I think all the best things in life are challenging. John Kennedy said: “We choose to do these things no because they are easy but because they are hard.” I get excited about that sort of challenge. I can’t get fired up and get out of bed in the morning without lots of caffeine and big challenges to tackle.

What happens next?

This has been one of the most challenging things for me to warp my mind around is that dealing with an organization as complex as the university I mean 38,000 students, hundreds of millions of dollars, all sorts of rules and procedures and by-laws and various administrative bodies that report to all different sectors… It has to be a prolonged and sequential process and collaborative, to the extent that it can be, so imposing strict timelines on it is very, very difficult. My unyielding hope is that I will leave office this year with a bill of rights endorsed and viewable by all administrators, faculty, and students.

On Friday I will present the bill with modifications, based on administrator input that I’ve received, to the Graduate Council. The Graduate Council is a group of faculty charged with addressing grad-student issues and matters of academic policy, things of that nature. Andrew Carnie, who is a linguistics professor, very smart, very welcoming and who has been very eager to aid the students in any way he can is head of the Graduate Council. I will present it to him and his body and hopefully within the next several weeks secure their endorsement and there may be some iterative back-and-forth “can you take this out… can you refer them to this document” types of discussions. After that we’re going to take it to the faculty senate which is the biggest conglomeration of faculty leaders on campus. I think there are about a hundred or more in that body so their endorsement is very significant. We’ll seek Dianne Horgan’s endorsement. We’ll seek Andrew Comrie, the dean of the graduate college, we’ll seek his endorsement. We’ll take it to Melissa Vito who is vice president for student affairs. We’ll take it to President Shelton, of course, because ultimately the buck stops with him. I’m sure I’m forgetting a handful of other important bodies, but we’ll set them up and knock them down one at a time.

Note: On Friday, Talenfeld presented a draft of the graduate student bill of rights to the UA Graduate Council. The Graduate Council passed the bill, granting graduate students 50 percent representation in grievance-resolution bodies. The bill will now move on to be reviewed by the faculty senate.