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Syracuse University’s Graduate Student Organization held its annual town hall to begin the 2024-25 academic year Wednesday night. The town hall outlined some of the organization’s plans for the year, including its meeting schedule, recruitment efforts and election proceedings.

During the meeting, GSO President Daniel J. Kimmel and the executive board welcomed prospective members and encouraged the audience to explore ways to participate in student government initiatives.

The organization is currently seeking new GSO senators, finance board members and multiple committee chairs. Throughout their presentations, members of the executive board called on graduate students in the audience to fill these roles.

“In this half-century-old graduate student government, as with many rights and freedoms, graduate students must diligently assert and exercise them, lest they fade away on our watch through indifference or indulgence,” Kimmel said. “By virtue of attending this town hall tonight, you have joined something rather special.”

Kimmel and Roger Rosena, GSO’s internal vice president, emphasized the need to fill its empty University Senate seats. The GSO USen representatives are charged with attending monthly meetings with administrators, faculty and undergraduate representatives. Rosena called the USen representative position a unique opportunity to offer perspectives to university leadership.

Currently, GSO has four university senators for the 2024-25 academic year. According to the USen bylaws, the organization has 11 total seats, leaving seven open ahead of elections.

“It’s important to have university senators staffed,” Kimmel said. “If we go to the administration fighting for greater representation, and they go back to us and say, ‘Well, you don’t fill the positions you do have,’ then that’s really bad for us.”

Rosena said GSO needs to appoint new academic program senators, who represent each program of study at the university and at-large senators. The 10 designated at-large senate seats can be filled by graduate students from any academic program, according to GSO’s website.

Senatorial representation for each graduate program is also crucial for funding purposes, Rosena said. Senators have the ability to advocate for fund allocations to their department and events, she said.

In the coming weeks, GSO will hold multiple outreach events, including its annual fall picnic Thursday and an upcoming election meeting next week, said Becca Vinciquerra, GSO director of external affairs and chair of its outreach and civic engagement committee.

She also said the organization intends to continue to use social media and GSO’s website as recruitment tools.

The first opportunity to elect new academic, at-large and university senators will come during next Wednesday’s GSO elections. In the town hall, Vinciquerra said that the organization will host its general meetings on the first Wednesday of every month at 5:30 p.m. in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs’ auditorium.

“Graduate student government is a repeated exercise,” Kimmel said. “It takes people that get involved year after year. I hope to get involved in (the) recruitment and cultivation of our future leaders.”

The GSO town hall came 48 hours after a protest held at 727 Comstock Ave. led by Syracuse Employees International Union Local 200United, a union that includes many graduate students at the university. The protest was in response to the university’s recently proposed 2.5% pay raise for workers. SEIU set 10% as its lowest acceptable increase.

“They are not making the living wage they deserve. The GSO has partnered with many such movements over the past few years … We hope that people will come and engage with us,” Kimmel said.

Kimmel also said that they have not heard of any recent plans to engage with SEIU, but would be happy to support the union’s goals.

Published on August 29, 2024 at 12:02 am

Contact Duncan: digreen@syr.edu