It’s that time of year again – the leaves return to the trees, the sunbathers return to the mall,and the campus is covered in SGA campaign chalk. Candidates make promises and kiss babies, and their supporters fill The Diamondback with the rosiest of portrayals of their presidential candidates. As a fifth-year graduate student, I’ve generally ignored the SGA-related Diamondback stories over the years, but this year I’ve decided to take a decidedly different approach. Why do I suddenly care about the SGA and the plight of the undergraduates?
The fact of the matter is, despite the small number of problems unique to graduate students, the majority of our issues are identical, and the only way to effectively address these issues is by working together. Regardless of age or status, we are all here to learn, and barriers such as crime, poor housing and high costs get in the way of that goal. Safety issues affect us all – robbers don’t ask if you’re a grad student or an undergrad when they mug you. Our parking and transportation issues are the same. We both pay too much for our books. We both have to deal with the lack of a college-town atmosphere. We need to realize we are in this together, and it is our leadership, either in the form of the Student Government Association or the Graduate Student Government, that needs to take the first step to develop communication and cooperation between the two groups.
When addressing issues for their respective constituents, our student governments have done an excellent job of advancing our causes. However, both governments are working in separate but parallel fashion to address many of these issues, which is highly inefficient. We have identical committees working on identical issues, and the committees never talk or meet with each other. We pester the same university officials, but we do so separately and in different fashions, leading to warped results. We need to realize our issues are the same, and by cooperating, we will present a common front of concern to the university and the state, leading to more improvements being made more quickly.
Most undergraduate student groups need to realize that involving graduate students in their activities would be beneficial to everyone. For graduate students, involving undergraduates from their departments in graduate-student lectures or activities will help to pass the torch along to the next generation. Graduate students need to realize we were all once undergrads ourselves, and the undergraduates may benefit more from our guidance and advice, especially when it comes to our fields of study, than they might from a distant third party. Undergraduates need to reach out to graduate students and realize they, for the most part, have figured out how to succeed academically and probably wouldn’t mind sharing their experience and knowledge.
I would be a hypocrite if I failed to mention that many faculty and staff issues are identical to student issues. We are all part of a wonderful community here at the university, but the more we divide the community into sections, the weaker we all become. The University Senate brings together faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students in a fashion that allows us to address these community-wide issues. The nature of the senate, and the work it does, has made this university into a much more livable community than it otherwise would be. I highly recommend communication and cooperation on university-wide issues between all four senate constituencies, something that happens frequently in committees, but could be encouraged to happen independently as well.
Undergraduate leaders are not obligated to reach out to graduate students, and the same is true for graduate leaders. Despite this lack of obligation, a truly visionary leader sees no boundaries, only problems and potential solutions. In this case, the best solution to the plethora of problems faced by all students at Maryland is cooperation between the SGA and the GSG. Cooperation in this fashion will mean elected student officials are going to have to work outside their direct constituencies, something that requires initiative and vision.
I challenge whoever wins the SGA and GSG elections to remember we are all in this together. Our leaders, duly elected by their individual constituencies, need to lead the way in collaboration and cooperation. We either stand together as a community, regardless of age, degree or occupation, or we fail together. Go Terps!
David Foster is a criminology and criminal justice graduate student. He can be reached at dfoster@crim.umd.edu.
