GPSO Constitution FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions About the Proposed GPSO Constitution

Spring 2002

PART I: OVERVIEW

1. What is the GPSO (Graduate and Professional Student Organization)?

Over the past 10 years, the GPSO has evolved into a strong advocacy group for the graduate and profes­sional students of IU-Bloomington. The GPSO is a representative organization, with delegates elected or appointed from many of the campus’ graduate and professional departments, schools, and programs. The officers of the GPSO represent the concerns of graduate and professional students, as communicated by these representa­tives, to the university administration. The GPSO also maintains standing committees to work on issues relevant to graduate and professional students, administers grant programs, and in many cases appoints representatives to university committees. In effect, then, the GPSO is already performing many of the func­tions of a de facto student government, especially when the purpose of student govern­ment is defined, as Paul Musgrave has recently argued in his proposal to reform IUSA, as primarily one of advocacy.

However, the GPSO is currently under the umbrella of IUSA, since IUSA claims to represent all students. This lack of official recognition has important consequences. Although administrators often solicit the GPSO for appointments to university committees, there is no formal procedure requiring them to do so. In recent memory, at least one committee seat which had been traditionally filled by the GPSO was suddenly filled by IUSA when the administrator in charge of it chose to go through a different channel. In addition, although the GPSO Moderator has often been invited to present to the Trustees on an annual basis, there is no regularly scheduled mechanism to ensure that this happens. However, the president of IUSA presents to the Trustees on a regular basis.

2. Why are we writing a new constitution?

In January 2000, the Graduate Student Organization (now the Graduate and Professional Student Organi­zation) began studying the formal establishment of a graduate and professional student government separate from IUSA. To that end, then-Moderator Sarah Stevens met with members of the administration and former IUSA presidents LaMaze Johnson and Meredith Suffron to discuss the possible advantages of such a change. President Johnson was amenable to the idea of a separate graduate and professional student government as long as liaison officers were appointed from both organizations in order to main­tain communications between them. These discussions allowed the exploration of whether or not to form a separate government for graduate and professional students to continue throughout the spring and fall of 2000. In the fall of 2000, GPSO departmental representatives polled their constituents and voted, on December 8, 2000, to proceed with the creation of a separate graduate and professional student govern­ment. Once the decision was made to form a student government for graduate and professional students, it became readily apparent that the old constitution was inadequate for the institution we wanted to create. Adopting a new constitution at the same time this new government came into being seemed to be the most sensible option.

3. Does establishing a new government reflect some kind of enmity between graduate and under­graduate students? Won’t this action diminish the student body’s voice in dealing with the administration?

The GPSO’s decision to establish itself as a student government was not made with any malice towards undergraduate students or the IUSA. Rather, it sprang from a recognition that the issues of concern to graduate and undergraduate students are significantly different. Members of each group are at very different stages of their personal, educational, and professional lives, and it is unrealistic to believe that one student government could do justice to all of their concerns.

There are, of course, some issues that affect all students, such as safety, bus service, parking, and other matters of university life. On these issues, collaboration between separated student governments would prove effective. However, graduate and professional students have many concerns that do not apply to undergraduates, such as the remuneration and working conditions of Associate Instructors, Research Assistants, and Graduate Assistants; funding for research activities at various levels of study; health insurance for AIs and fellowship students; opportunities for professionalization, including effective mentoring relationships with faculty; and job searching in an always-tight academic market.

This assertion is supported by e-mail polls conducted by the GPSO that indicate that the top concerns of graduate and professional students include:

• Stipend levels for various employment positions (AIs, RAs, GAs, graders, part-time lecturers, etc.)
• AI training and mentoring
• Opportunities for professional development
• Health insurance
• Issues of unfair treatment by thesis advisors and committees
• Graduate student loans

These issues rarely, if ever, are discussed by the IUSA.

Essentially what this structural change will do is establish two strong voices in discussing student body issues with the administration rather than just one. If anything, this alteration should strengthen, not weaken, the students’ hands in negotiating controversial issues with members of the administration. It is difficult to imagine an issue that would set the undergraduate and graduate student bodies to working at cross-purposes to the point where their collective voice would be significantly weakened. The under­graduate and graduate student governments are already separated at IUPUI, for instance, and that has not seemed to weaken the students’ position there. Our interviews with members of separate graduate and professional student govern­ments at the other Big 10 universities with this arrangement (Penn State, Ohio State and Minnesota) confirm that this fear is unfounded and that the separate governments are able to work together on issues amicably.

In short, the recognition of the GPSO as a separate graduate and professional student government would benefit both graduate and professional students and undergraduates by allowing each organization to focus its time and energy on those issues relevant to its constituents. The GPSO believes that graduate and professional students have fundamentally different experiences from undergraduate students, and that meeting the needs of both groups with separate student governments would be in the best interest of all students at Indiana University–Bloomington.

4. What is the primary benefit the GPSO hopes to gain by becoming a functioning student government for graduate and professional students?

In a word, the GPSO is trying to gain access. As we have argued earlier, IUSA has a tremendous amount of access to the Board of Trustees, various student committees and members of the administration that the GPSO does not. We would like to acquire that same type of guaranteed access to these bodies and individuals that the IUSA has.

5. Will graduate and professional students lose access to student benefits and services (the library, child care, Bloomington Transit, legal services, Union Board, athletic tickets, the SRSC)?

These services are financed by fees that all students pay, including the student activity fee, and they are administered by IUB for the benefit of all students. Access to them will not change if the GPSO becomes a student government.

6. How will the funding structure of the GPSO be altered?

The truth of the matter is that no one is really sure what this shift would mean in terms of the finances for this organization. One possibility is that the fees that students now pay for both organizations would be directed so that undergraduates would only finance the IUSA and graduate and professional students would only finance the GPSO. While this option could mean the loss of money overall to our organization, it is highly unlikely to come to pass given the complications it would engender within the bursar’s office.

7. Will CASI funding (funds available for student groups that don’t receive a portion of the Mandatory Student Activity Fee) for graduate and professional student groups be affected by this change?

Perhaps, but again it is impossible to predict what that effect might be. The governing board of CASI consists of both elected members and some who are appointed by the IUSA administration. Should the GPSO complete the transition to a government, we would be able to request seats on the governing board in order to provide a sympathetic ear to graduate and professional student groups.

8. Does this movement have anything to do with unionization of AIs?

No. AIs are only a portion of the graduate and professional student body at IUB and this change is designed to improve the lives of all such students here.

PART II: STUDENT GOVERNANCE AT IUB

1. What is the present student government structure at IUB?

Currently, IUSA represents all students on the IUB campus. The IUSA is divided into two chambers, the Senate and the Assembly of Representatives. The constituencies in the Senate are based on residential loca­tion, so there are Senators for the residence halls, Greek organizations, Family Housing units and off-campus students. The 36 members of the Assembly of Representatives are elected by academic constituencies. Eleven of these seats are reserved for graduate and professional students. (These numbers may change soon as IUSA is debating a new constitution that would significantly alter the structure of its legislature.) Histori­cally, IUSA has had a difficult time persuading graduate and professional students to become in­volved. As of January 2002, the IUSA website lists every graduate and professional student seat in IUSA as vacant.

2. How did IUSA become the student body government?

According to the IUSA web site (www.indiana.edu/~iusa/history.phtml), IUSA was created as the result of a practical use of reverse psychology by Herman Wells in the 1950s. However, members of the Executive Committee did quite a bit of research on this question and were unable to find a directive from the Board of Trustees that specifically designates the IUSA as the student body government.

3. What will happen to the IUSA seats reserved for graduate and professional students?

Although it will not happen automatically, we believe that the best solution for these Representative seats is that they be abolished upon the creation of a graduate and professional student government. We hope that this solution could be implemented at the same time that IUSA adopts its new constitution, should this latter process be completed.

PART III: THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION

1. By what process was the new document created?

The Graduate Government committee started laying the groundwork for writing this constitution in January, 2001. This process included researching the constitutions of more than 20 graduate and profes­sional student governments from across the country and deciding what models we wanted to base the new structures on. A series of lengthy summer meetings where the text of the new constitution was written followed. The GPSO Executive Committee also vetted the document in a meeting with the Graduate Government committee in September in preparation for its presentation to the whole GPSO. The docu­ment was then reviewed by the Representatives during the next three meetings, a process that culminated in its unanimous approval by the Representatives at the December, 2001 meeting.

2. What are the major changes from the current constitution?

The most important change, though small in words, is that in this constitution the GPSO claims to be the sole official representative of the IUB graduate and professional student population. Departments that ratify this constitution thus agree with this claim and believe that only the GPSO should act as the collective voice for all graduate and professional students.

The new constitution also elucidates some changes to the operation and composition of the Executive Com­mittee (ExComm). It specifically outlines the duties and powers of the officers who make up the ExComm, a task that was previously left to the by-laws. An Assistant Moderator position has been created to take some of the load off of the Moderator’s shoulders and replaces the NAGPS liaison as a member of the ExComm. A provision of the constitution that regularizes an informal procedure is the one that grants the Moderator the ability to make appointments to external university committees. The previous set of by-laws had spread this power among the Committees Coordinator, the Moderator and the relevant GSO committees, but the reality was that these decisions were nearly always made just by the Moderator.

The new constitution also includes material on the Assembly of departmental representatives that was relegated to the by-laws in the previous constitution. For example, the specific powers and duties of the Representatives are spelled out explicitly in the new document. In addition, it specifically provides for both voting and non-voting representatives. This change formalizes a practice that has been followed in an ad-hoc manner by representatives from interdisciplinary programs whose students are already represented by other departments (e.g. Medieval Studies and African Studies). The quorum level for a valid Assembly meeting has also been increased slightly (from 30 to 33 percent). Finally, the new constitution formalizes the composition of the Assembly by setting a proportional formula for departmental representation (see points 4 and 5 below).

Overall, the proposed constitution is longer and more formalized than the current one, reflecting the new responsibilities the GPSO will be assuming.

3. Has the basic philosophy behind the GPSO changed in the proposed constitution?

Strenuous efforts have been made in the creation of this document to preserve the spirit of collegial executive leadership and consensus decision-making that characterizes the current constitution. In the places where changes have been made that might impact this ethos, steps have been taken to minimize these effects. The hope is that the consensual way in which the GPSO presently operates can be carried forward into our new situation as much as possible.

4. How are departments defined for the purpose of assigning seats (III.2)?

A department is defined as a unit within the Graduate School or the various professional schools that operates a program which leads to a graduate or professional degree. Exceptions to this rule may be made for interdisciplinary units that do not have home departments or are recognized by the Graduate School as autonomous groupings.

5. Why was the ratio of 200 students to one Assembly seat chosen (III.2)?

Basically, the issue came down to one of fairness versus manageability. We wanted to make sure that larger departments could be represented in a way that matches their size, but we also wanted to ensure that the Assembly did not grow so large as to become unwieldy. The Graduate Government committee spent a lot of time this summer working on various numerical scenarios, and it turned out that the ratio of 200:1 did the best job of addressing these two competing concerns.

6. Why do officers serve calendar rather than academic year terms (IV.2)?

We have noticed that most new Representatives start their terms in the fall. In order for the organization to be running smoothly at the time of their arrival, it makes the most sense for the officers of the Execu­tive Committee to already be in place. These “overlapping” terms encourage continuity in the organiza­tion and help ensure that the GPSO is ready to go at the beginning of the academic year.

7. Why must new officers resign their Assembly seats in order to take up elected positions on the Executive Committee (IV.2)?

Elected officers are going to be very busy people under the new constitution, especially if one adds in the fact that they will be graduate or professional students who have classes to teach or papers to write. It would be difficult for them to adequately represent their home department while at the same time fulfill their time commitments to the GPSO as well. Even though this procedure means that a few departments will need to select new Representatives every January, this requirement is the fairest procedure to all concerned.

PART IV: THE FUTURE

1. How will this document be ratified (VIII.1)?

A “state legislatures model,” where department-level organizations or special departmental conventions would be asked to accept or reject the proposed constitution, has been adopted by the Representatives. Specific procedures for conducting these referendums have been suggested by the Graduate Government committee, but departments may make changes to them as appropriate for their circumstances. Two-thirds of all departments must agree to the new constitution in order for it to go into force.

2. How soon will the new constitution go into effect?

We would like to finish the ratification process by the end of the Spring 2002 semester.

3. What will happen to the officers and representatives who serve under the procedures outlined in the old constitution if the new one is adopted?

They will be allowed to serve out their terms until the time comes for new elections to those positions.

4. How will we convince the administration to recognize the GPSO as the graduate and professional student government?

Since the beginning of this process, members of the Executive Committee have been having informal discussions with members of the administration to let them know what we are planning to do. Once the proposed constitution is ratified, the Executive Committee and Representatives will lobby the administration as strongly as they can to recognize our change in status.