By Carrie PorterThe Daily Northwestern
Graduate students and administrators met for the first time Monday to discuss improvements to health insurance and stipends at a graduate student town hall meeting.
The Graduate School organized the meeting to hear student opinions on how best to upgrade benefits in light of new endowment funds brought in by profits from sales of the drug Lyrica. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer debuted Lyrica, a neurological pain reliever developed at Northwestern, last year.
The Graduate School is slated to receive one-third of NU’s revenues from the drug, which could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, said Andrew Wachtel, dean of The Graduate School.
About 20 graduate students slouched in the back rows of Hardin Hall and listened to Wachtel discuss possible plans. Debate revolved around whether the school should use the money to improve its students’ health plans or to boost their stipends.
A few attendees sipped wine in plastic cups and nibbled on cheese while interjecting their questions throughout the two-hour meeting.
“We have a choice to make about how we allocate resources,” said Simon Greenwold, associate dean of the school.
“It is our choice to make, but we want to hear what the students think. We felt that it would be consistent with our desire to be student-focused and to give our community an opportunity to learn how it all fits together.”
Graduate students listened attentively as Wachtel outlined the possible changes and agreed that the current health insurance plans need revising in the future.
Michaela De Soucey, a fifth-year graduate student, said she thinks that besides being too expensive, the continual changes to the health insurance coverage create confusion among students.
“The plans every year are different, and there is little continuity between what is covered and what isn’t covered,” De Soucey said. “Right now, insurance itself is 10 percent of my monthly income.”
The Graduate School plans to organize about one town hall meeting like Monday’s each quarter as part of continual efforts by both the administration and students to improve graduate student life on campus.
“With 3,000 graduate students, we look for a mission,” Wachtel said. “Where can we provide value for the graduate students?
“We’re trying to get everyone so that they’re not sleeping on the streets,” he added.
Nathan Fry, vice president of advocacy for the Graduate Student Association and a third-year graduate student, suggested the enthusiasm present within the graduate student body is draining.
“Graduate students are very concerned about issues that affect them, but they do little,” Fry said. “The graduate school has seemed much more receptive recently with changes to the dismissal policy and progress in getting the UPass, which we’ve wanted for a decade.”
The 2005-06 academic year marked a water-shed moment in graduate student activism, when the unionized student body at New York University crossed the picket line to protest the end of its contract.
The strike shut down several hundred classes and drew national media attention.
“We would like to keep an educated and engaged, well-taken-care-of student population,” Greenwold said. “Having those things might make students less inclined to want to unionize because it interrupts the educational fabric of the institution.”
Reach Carrie Porter at [email protected].
Quality ControlThe Graduate School at NUcontinues to make efforts at improving life for its students through several different initiatives.- The Graduate School’s Community Building Grants awarded eight clubs funding to jumpstart programs ranging from a curling club to a sushi-cuisine club. The school hopes the clubs will foster greater unity in the often isolated environment of graduate school.- An activities fee will provide graduate students with a UPass, legal services and other community benefits. The Graduate School plans to debut the quarterly $60 fee in January.- Town hall meetings for students and administration will occur mostly on a quarterly basis. The meetings will target specific issues within the school and try to find solutions. Faculty and students discussed raising stipends and improving health care plans at a meeting on Monday.- Changes to the dismissal policy within The Graduate School prevent the firing of students without reasonable cause.
