Leading the charge for grad students

Kiran Bhardwaj, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, views her job not just as a responsibility, but a calling.

Bhardwaj, a graduate student studying philosophy, said her interest in ethics led her to seek office.

“One of the things I very strongly believe is that, if you’re doing ethics, you ought to be putting that into practice,” she said. “Much of the work that I do as president is ethics in practice.”

Bhardwaj’s administration is focused on properly representing the interests of the University’s large graduate and professional student population, which makes up 37 percent of the student body. As with undergraduate Student Body President Christy Lambden, Bhardwaj will serve in her position for one academic year.

She said financial awareness was the central concern of the GPSF because graduate students can face economic challenges.

One of Bhardwaj’s administration’s top priorities has been creating an emergency fund for graduate and professional students who run into tough financial situations.

Dylan Glatt, Bhardwaj’s chief of staff, said financial advocacy is the most important and difficult of the organization’s responsibilities.

He said teaching and research assistants receive a minimum stipend of $15,200, which the Bhardwaj administration is trying to increase.

“If you’re coming in with a family, maybe a spouse or a child, you’re potentially paying health insurance for that person,” he said. “It’s not easy, and it’s something that we’re acutely aware of.”

Julie Lauffenburger, vice president for internal affairs for GPSF, echoed Glatt’s concerns.

“Students always care about affordability, so it’s our goal to try to minimize any financial changes at the University as much as possible for graduate and professional students,” she said.

Bhardwaj said they use a variety of avenues to improve the financial situation of graduate students.

“We’re constantly advocating for competitive stipends, trying to ensure that fees are as useful as possible and we’re trying to make sure that people realize what the loan deals are for us,” she said.

Graduate students cannot receive subsidized federal loans.

“Graduate students get a really sore deal in loans,” Bhardwaj said.

She said a lack of publicity for her office made it difficult to raise awareness among graduate and professional students for the resources that are available to them.

“Visibility, trying to be present to the campus, is something we’re trying to work on this year,” she said. “There’s no one point of entry, and there’s no one point of communication.

“You will find that a lot of graduate students are ignorant of really fantastic resources that we have on campus,” Bhardwaj said.

The GPSF is also working with the graduate school to create a second-semester check-in so students are reminded after orientation about the resources that are available to them.

“When you come in as a first-year graduate student, these are the things that you’re thinking about: ‘Oh my God, where am I going to live? What are my classes? Where are my classes? Am I going to have friends? How am I going to eat?’ You get handed a number of pieces of information, but they don’t all stick,” Bhardwaj said.

“It sounds really simple, but I think it can make a big impact in people’s lives.”

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