Issues that are of great importance for graduate students couldn’t be solved at the fourth meeting of the Graduate Student Senate on Friday, due to poor attendance.
“Today less than three-quarters of the voting population were at the meeting,” said Kelly Lang, representative of Student Affairs. This is the minimum number of GSS members that has to be present for any kind of decision making.
One of the topics was the proposal by the graduate college for an idea on how to solve the problem of the rising costs for the new mandatory health insurance plan.
Since most undergraduate students are covered under their parents’ plan, graduate students constitute two-thirds of BGSU’s health care plan users.
“Right now the graduate college gives graduate students $50 per semester to help with the cost of insurance. But now the new policy is more expensive,” said Zach Hilpert, GSS president.
Students buy the current plan for $1,350 from the Chickering Group, while the former plan cost less than $900, he said.
In order to provide graduate students with additional financial support, Heinz Bulmahn, dean of the Graduate College, made a proposal at the last GSS meeting that would double the subsidy given to the students.
Next fall, graduate students will receive an increase of 3.25 percent in their stipends, but 0.75 percent would be taken out of their paychecks right away, according to Bulmahn.
“That would add another $100 for health insurance,” Hilpert said.
However, the decrease in the raise from 3.25 to 2.5 percent would affect all graduate students who receive stipends, including those who don’t buy their health insurance from the Chickering Group.
“The plan is to vote on this issue on Oct. 28, which will be the next GSS meeting,” Hilpert said. “I have honestly no idea if the proposal will pass or not.”
Guest speaker of the GSS assembly on Friday was BGSU President Sidney Ribeau, who addressed another issue that involved graduate students and their funding – no respect for higher education in Ohio.
“The anti-intellectualism bias that is existing in the state of Ohio results in lack of support for higher education,” Ribeau said. According to him, particularly doctoral programs are affected by this. “We are asked, why there has to be an English department at every university.”
Consequently, BGSU has to justify that its programs are competitive, he said.
“We won’t be able to maintain the excellence of our programs if we can’t keep them funded. You want your program to be the best, high-quality program, not just the cheapest,” Ribeau said. “If we’re waiting to get money from the state we’d be waiting for a long time.”
Within the last decade, BGSU’s state funding has steadily decreased from 70 percent in 1995 to 29 percent in 2005.
Four-and-a-half percent of this year’s figure is funding from the federal government. Consequently, the University is largely dependent on private donations, according to Ribeau.
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