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“It is perhaps not up to the student government to cater to thewishes of every single graduate colleague in hopes of creatinga sense of a unified community. Such a plan would be tantamountto catering to the needs of no one.”a member of the GSAS ExecutiveCommittee; I serve with the StudentAffairs Caucus (SAC) at ColumbiaSenate; and I am on the AlumniBoard of GSAS. I now understandcommunity to encompass all of theseconstituent organizations including,but not limited to, the student government.GSAC is a body of studentelecteddepartmental representativesfrom the 61 Ph.D. and 48 M.A.programs of GSAS. Each representativeis responsible for raisingsystemic issues originating in theirlocal milieu. This is our first role, inwhich, according to our mission, we“facilitate communication betweengraduate students and administratorsin the areas of housing, campusand study space, computer services,health care, and stipends.” This role,I believe, should be expanded toinclude a multi-stakeholder approachto community-building by workingtogether with the dean of GSAS, theSAC and University Senate, and otherprofessional student associationson campus. The active intermediaryposition of GSAC allows us to expandour mission statement in this way,and it is the direction GSAC needs totake in order to be integrated in thegraduate lives of students to the samedegree as students are integrated intheir own graduate programs.We have begun to engage insuch an approach. GSAC holds twostudent seats on the GSAS ExecutiveCommittee, and we gained apermanent student seat on the GSASAlumni Board in June 2011. We alsorecently established the need fordedicated space for graduate studentson campus. Our 2009 Quality of LifeSurvey (QoL) showed that studentsfound lack of space a problem in conductingtheir scholarly work. 62% ofthe respondents—19% of the entireGSAS student population—rated theavailability of space as average to verypoor. An additional 41% noted that,due to the lack of space, they workedfrom home. In response, with thehelp of SAC and Dean Alonso, weproposed a document that called foran interim space for student use.In September 2010, the UniversitySenate adopted a resolution for adedicated Graduate Student Center.The development of an interimgraduate center is now in the works.Space for students is one of the mostsignificant achievements of ourstudent government in recent yearsand an important asset in establishinga stronger community within theschool.Compared to the level of fundingwe receive from student activityfees—roughly $71,000 per annum—GSAC has considerable ambitionsfor the 2011-12 year. Our currentactivities include sponsored eventsand activities, recognition of graduatestudent groups, and partial fundingfor small-scale graduate conferences.These programs were not designedto spearhead community-building,and as a consequence they tend tobe viewed by the student body as anotherchannel for one-off assistancerather than as an evolving set of programsthat are thoughtfully designedto improve life on campus and fosterinterdepartmental community. Interms of events, student governmentis not the sole outlet for students toenjoy themselves in New York, andwe are in competition with the city.Superscript 13Link back to contents page