Faculty Senate Policies passed:

GPSC members ensured that through the academic integrity policy, curiosity driven research done in classes can be resubmitted within a student's dissertation or thesis. Additionally, we made sure that the professor teaching a class shoulders the burden of informing students of their resubmission policy within their class syllabus. GPSC members ensured the student's right to file sexual harassment complaints that would be vigorously pursued via this policy. This comprehensive policy includes regulations for faculty-faculty, faculty-student, and student-student sexual harassment. Following federal law, this policy allows students to have the right to file anonymous complaints what will be investigated.

TA workload decision package:

As mentioned elsewhere, GPSC has been heavily involved in getting this additional $2M to hire more TA's at UA. During the 1999-2000 academic year, GPSC started and was involved in the TA Workload Taskforce that wrote a report in May of 2000. This decision package came from the recommendations of this taskforce. During Fall of 2000, members of GPSC have convinced the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) and the UA administration to make this a priority. Currently, we are trying to convince the Arizona Legislature.

Christopher City:

During late spring and through the summer of 2000, GPSC members met with the VP for Campus Life and the Director of Residence Life concerning the shutdown of Christopher City. Through these discussions, they agreed to form a Transition Team to follow the former Christopher City residents to retain some sense of community. Additionally, this team would make the decisions concerning the design and rebuilding of these facilities. This team's discussions have been fruitful and they are currently reviewing architect plans and asking for construction bids for these new facilities.

Student Health Insurance:

General concerns were brought up about the student health insurance available through United Healthcare, that it is inexpensive; but, this coverage is inadequate and inflexible. A GPSC subcommittee, headed by a MD-Ph.D. student, worked to give students more options concerning health insurance. These options may include the following choices: the current coverage, high deductible - high maximum coverage (a.k.a. catastrophic insurance), low maximum - prescription drug coverage, etc. This subcommittee met with the liaison of United Healthcare on February 6, 2001, to discuss these options. There were several reports of TA/RA's not being signed up for their provided health insurance. As GPSC President, I have personally taken this issue up myself. I am negotiating with the Graduate College to provide an option to sign up for the insurance on the old Notice of Appointment (NOA) form that all TA's and RA's must fill out in order to become paid. If everything goes as I plan, then for the people who check this box on this form these people will be enrolled for the term of the appointment. All others that would like insurance would need to enroll via RSVP as they do now.

Graduate Assistant Handbook:

Members of GPSC are working closely with the Graduate College to write a Graduate Assistant Handbook. This handbook will contain all policies and procedures must follow and give a description of their rights and employment benefits. This will be modeled after the University of Michigan's Handbook.

Written by Jason Auxier, GPSC President, 2000 - 2001