Nick Mason, the sole newcomer to Syracuse University’s Graduate Student Organization’s 2018-19 executive board, said he found his way to the GSO “reluctantly.”

Mason, a Ph.D. candidate in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, joined GSO in the 2017-18 academic year as a senator when the history department needed a representative and no one else stepped up. After serving on the Finance Committee, he said he found the GSO experience more valuable than he expected.

“It kind of changed my whole outlook on school here,” he said.

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GSO will hold its first senate meeting of the year Wednesday evening. Mason and President Jack Wilson said that this year they will focus on revitalizing GSO participation and graduate civic engagement, advocating for graduate students affected by federal policy changes and executing plans set in place last year.

“This is deep, meaningful work to me, doing the business of the grads,” said Wilson, a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Arts and Sciences’ psychology department.

The GSO’s job is to advocate for graduate students and make their voices heard, Mason said. Rajesh Kumar, a doctoral candidate in computer science who served as GSO president during the 2016-17 academic year, said these efforts are imperative when it comes to communicating with the SU administration about issues affecting graduate students.

He pointed to increase graduate career services and changes to childcare subsidies as efforts that both came partly through GSO efforts. Increasing graduate services, Kumar added, makes a difference when attracting students to SU, over similar universities.

“I hope that the GSO and the university administration will work together to reach higher than their peer institutions,” Kumar said.

GSO approved a change in graduate health insurance from an employee to student plan last April, and the vote was contentious among graduate students. Wilson said GSO’s focus this year will be on implementing the plan correctly.

He expressed pride in the new plan and how it will service graduate students that take part in it.

“I feel that the GSO did unequivocally a good thing in agreeing to this plan,” he said. “Employees who are going to be on the employee plan this year are now in … paying half as much in healthcare costs and a third as much in healthcare premiums.”

Wilson (left) and Mason were re-elected and elected, respectively, in April. Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

GSO’s responsibility goes beyond dialogue with the university’s administration, Mason said. GSO and its executive board need to be prepared to get involved in national politics to do their jobs successfully, he added.

One of GSO’s priorities this year, Wilson said, will be looking into helping international students. Because of a new President Donald Trump administration policy, visas for Chinese graduate students in STEM fields have to be renewed every year instead of every five years. Visas are also more expensive now, Wilson said, which he found concerning.

“I want to see if there is more that we can do as a university to make (international students’) lives a little easier, even as Washington tries to make them harder,” Wilson said.

Mason is focused on increasing participation in GSO during his time as internal vice president, he said. The GSO Senate can have a maximum of 170 voting members, including academic plan senators, university senators and at-large senators.

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But of the available seats, only about 40 of them were filled last year. Mason said that’s “about the usual.”

In an effort to increase civic engagement among graduate students, Wilson is in the process of reaching out to the campaigns of Democrat Dana Balter and Rep. John Katko (R-Camillus), who are competing to represent New York’s 24th congressional district. Of the roughly 6,600 graduate students at SU, 2,500 of them are voting-eligible U.S. citizens, Wilson said.

“If there was ever a moment to get graduate students into a culture of civic engagement, it is this year,” he added. “We are in a House race that is up for grabs in a House district that is up for grabs. So this is the moment.”

Discussions over the summer, Wilson said, were largely about internal improvements, including the use of an existing university system to allow for anonymous, electronic complaints and follow ups. Using this system is important, Wilson added, because it gives GSO members a chance to get the necessary information to act on complaints.

During any given year, Wilson said the GSO represents about 4,600 graduate students on SU’s Main Campus. This doesn’t include online graduate students or those that are participating in abroad programs, meaning upwards of 2,000 graduate students still lack official representation.

“(We’re) looking at ways to see how they can be organized and get representation,” Wilson said.

Published on September 11, 2018 at 11:58 pm

Contact Colleen: cefergus@syr.edu | @ColleenEFergus2