DSC Page
by Shawn Rice
For this month’s installment of the DSC page, we have a mix of the practical as well as a more reflective section about what it means to be a student at the Graduate Center and also be employed by the Graduate Center itself. Let’s start with the practical.
Party
We’re having a party, and you’re invited. Find it on October 23, starting at 8pm in 5414. There will be booze, and there will be food; but, really, what more do you need for a way to let off some steam mid-semester?
Meetings
We have three more plenary meetings this semester: October 23, November 11, and December 11. All the meetings start at 6pm in room 5414. Everyone is welcome; please come if you have any interest.
Free Legal Consultations
Free legal advice is available for you at the Graduate Center. Look on the DSC website (www.cunydsc.org) for times and a form to signup. Walk-ins are welcome, time permitting.
Travel Grants
Go to a conference. Really, it helps your CV. Before you go, apply for a travel grant for up to $300. Save your receipts. Forms are available on the DSC website.
Voting for Chartered Organizations
Next, chartered organizations need to turn in rosters quite often to remain active in the eyes of the DSC. This has always been a tedious process for both the chairs of the organizations as well as for the Co-Chair for Student Affairs. This year, we’ve implemented a much more intelligent system that works through Votenet, the voting system that we use to run our elections.
Now, the chartered organization chairs no longer need to chase down members and potential members to receive the requisite number of signatures; instead you should receive a link to the voting system in which you can “vote” for the organizations, which is, effectively, a signature.
If you haven’t received an email, then please look at the DSC website for a link to the voting system. You might even find new organizations that you want to join.
• • •
Let’s move to the reflective. As graduate students in the Graduate Center, we hold the obvious position of being, well, students. I generally think of myself as a student first. Yet, much, perhaps too much, of my week is spent planning for classes that I’m about to teach and grading papers.
This is because I’m also an adjunct, and I probably spend each week worrying more about what and how I’m going to teach than I do with my work. In all likelihood, most of you are in the same boat, acting as both students and teachers, occupying both sides of the university.
As an adjunct, I am paid by Hunter College, and so there is a split: I’m a student of the Graduate School, and I’m an employee of Hunter College. However, those who have teaching fellowships, those who are Grad B’s and C’s are both students and employees of the Graduate School, making for a schizophrenic situation. But, as you might occupy both of these positions at once, most of us are looked at as students first and perhaps as students and students alone.
One practical manifestation of this situation, and the one that I want to focus on, is that Grad B’s and C’s make up a population of part-time instructional faculty at the Graduate School. Yes, you are teaching at other campuses, but you are technically employees of the Graduate School and not the campus at which you teach. Because of this, for lack of a better word, weirdness, we don’t have a seat that is due to us on the University Faculty Senate. I should actually say you don’t because, as an adjunct, I’m not one of the over 600 part-time faculty who are not represented.
And, even more practical, the DSC is sponsoring a snap-election of all part-time instructional faculty at the Graduate Center — a population that contains perhaps thirty others besides Grad B’s and C’s— in order to elect pro tempore representative to send to UFS.
So, if you fall into one of these categories, look out for the call for nominations.
