Carnegie Mellon University

Silhouette of student in cap and gown

August 22, 2019

GSA Letters to US Congress

The GSA has, and will continue to advocate at every level of government to ensure a better quality of life for graduate students on and off campus.

By Divyansh Kaushik, GSA VP of External Affairs

Photo credit: Brian Snyder / Reuters

If you follow our social media profiles, you may have noticed an increase in the public statements we have put out. These statements have included writing to Congress on issues such as mental health, collegiate food insecurity, sexual harassment, and improving data collection across institutions of higher education. In sum, these statements address a wide variety of issues that create the campus climate at CMU. The campus climate of the university effects mental health issues plaguing the graduate student population, systemic issues around sexual harassment and assault, as well as collegiate food insecurity that forces one to decide between paying rent or having breakfast. Like most campuses, these issues exist at CMU and have one thing in common -- they are systemic. Systemic issues require systemic response. And that means the government must pay attention.

Take mental health for example: 

Nobody can dispute that there is an ever-growing mental health crisis, a crisis being driven often at times by poor advisor-advisee relationships or a poor work-life balance, resulting in graduate students facing serious mental health problems six times the rate of the general population and twice that of undergraduate students. In consequence, nationwide, half of doctoral students leave school without finishing their degrees, as there are few resources or protections for graduate students. This is unacceptable. 

We believe steps must be taken by the federal government to provide support and infrastructure to universities in order to combat this epidemic, and so, with our colleagues at the National Association of Graduate Professional Students (NAGPS), we wrote to Congress urging them to pass the Higher Education Mental Health Act of 2019, and further asked them to also address that are not tackled by the bill in its current form.

But mental health is just one issue. Students also face challenges affording food.

In 2018, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Patty Murray (D-WA) requested a GAO report on collegiate food insecurity. The report found over 3 million students did not receive SNAP benefits even though they were eligible. Shocking as it is, the report does not mention graduate students even once. 

There is a clear reason behind that, there are no reliable national studies that look at collegiate food insecurity at the graduate level. A 2017 study found that over 19% of CMU students were food insecure, which led to the creation of the CMU Pantry. Recently introduced legislation, Closing the College Hunger Gap Act, and the College Student Hunger Act not just aim to understand the scope of this issue, but also work towards eliminating this issue from our campuses altogether. Together with our friends at MIT, we urged Congress to ensure a smooth passage of these bills.

Another major issue affecting our campus climate is sexual harassment and assault. 

Just last year, the National Academies released a report on sexual harassment in academia and found that over 25% women face harassment at workplace. We were then thrilled to see the House of Representatives work in a bipartisan fashion to pass the Sexual Harassment in Science Act, a bill aimed at combating this issue at its core, by understanding what should be the systemic response to this problem. We believe it to be a positive step, when issues like sexual harassment are so prevalent at institutes like CMU and MIT but with the bill not gaining any traction in the Senate, we thanked the House of Representatives for passing this bill and urged the Senate leadership to pass this vital piece of legislation.

Campus climate is just as important as one’s research or their course curriculum. It is a huge component of what defines one’s graduate experience. Ensuring our campus nurtures a culture that allows everybody an equal opportunity to pursue the education they need is imperative. It requires buy in from every stakeholder, which is why, besides advocating for better policies at the university level, the GSA has, and will continue to advocate at every level of government to ensure a better quality of life for graduate students on and off campus.