Rights of graduate and professional students will be protected by new bill

Students in graduate and doctoral programs will soon have a Bill of Rights.

Dylan Russell, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, said the organization has been considering developing this bill for a while but has not been ready to do so until this year.

“We’ve now evolved into where we’re diving back into some of the hardy issues that affect graduate and professional students,” Russell said.

Russell said graduate students at Duke and other private institutions recently gained the right to unionize, but because UNC is public, it must take other steps to secure graduate student rights.

“We’re just asking to codify the rights and responsibilities of graduate and professional students at Carolina — what does it look like and what does it mean to be a graduate student here,” he said.

Russell said he hopes the document will include privileges such as freedom from discrimination and rights to academic file access, grievance mechanisms, clear and accessible funding and University governance and arbitration.

Steven Matson, dean of the UNC Graduate School, said he supports the bill.

“I think it’s perfectly appropriate for graduate students to articulate issues that they think are important for their well-being here at Carolina,” Matson said. “So I have no objection to them working toward this goal.”

Matson said the Graduate School will collaborate with and help GPSF to develop the Bill of Rights.

“The Graduate School is ready and willing to help the students craft a document that they believe and we believe will help to establish expectations between the faculty and the graduate students with their regard to their work as research assistants and teaching assistants,” Matson said.

Sam Green, student body vice president, said student government is not collaborating with GPSF on this specific initiative.

“In terms of the graduate student Bill of Rights, if Dylan or any of his working people wanted to work with administration and the undergraduate representatives of student government we’d be more than happy to reach out and work with them on that,” Green said.

A draft will be written by a GPSF committee comprised of faculty, graduate and professional students. After feedback from the University, the revised bill must be approved by the GPSF Senate, GPSF Faculty Council and finally the Board of Trustees in March 2017 in order to be implemented by July 1, 2017.

“I think the document itself will be an enforcement mechanism so students, advisors and administrators can point to this document and say, ‘Hey, this is a mutually agreed upon, living document that constitutes what our relationships, what our expectations, what our work load will look like at Carolina,’” Russell said.

university@dailytarheel.com