GPSG Presidential Platform

Hello!

I am a PhD Candidate in Toxicology at UNC Chapel Hill and I would like to be your 2025 Graduate and Professional Student Government President. Over my three years of service to the GPSG Senate, I have authored, sponsored, and supported over half a dozen pieces of the progressive legislation that makes the GPSG Senate the bellweather of student interests. From authoring the No Confidence, Dismiss Rasheem Holland, and Baseline Stipends Increase resolutions to cosigning the Ceasefire and Anti-Ice resolutions, I have demonstrated my leadership within the Senate and University. As President I will continue acting in the best interests of the Graduate and Professional student body, as I have in my capacity as Graduate Workers President of the UNC Workers Union.

Financial Freedom and Wellness

• Stipend Increase & Regular COL

  • Graduate stipend (PhD) minimums hit barely half the cost of living in Orange County, which is approximately 4,000 dollars per month according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Currently, Ph.D. stipends start at $20,600 per year, making UNC rank the lowest out of its peer institutions for graduate student compensation.
  • Support must be sufficient to ensure graduates are able to live where they work, as UNC’s operations and research could not proceed without their labor.

    • As GPSG President, I will advocate to the Board of Trustees for a minimum Ph.D. stipend of 40,000$.

    • Furthermore I will continue efforts in promoting cross departmental collaboration towards addressing pay disparity.

• Well-being Day Enforcement

• The Graduate School does not have an across-the-board enforcement policy for well-being days. Moreover, many schools and programs require lab work, teaching, and other meetings during well-being days. Graduate students deserve to truly have time off from work and teaching in order to thrive.

  • As GPSG President, I will promote policy adoption by departments and colleges to ensure reserved well-being days for the well being of graduate students.

• Guarantees of funding

  • Many of us rely on the goodwill of our academic partners and departmental administrators to retain our standing and student status. Goodwill and handshake deals do not provide adequate support to ensuring our continued employment.

    • As GPSG President I will include efforts to broaden existing models of funding gaurantees to the agreements that teachers and researchers have in their working groups or departments.

Greater Transparency

• Restore Student-Led Honor Court

  • Last July, UNC administration announced their plan to take over UNC’s student-led Honor Court system and end its 100+ years of self-governance in favor of complete administrative control over student Honor Code violations. While UNC administration frames this issue as helpful in alleviating the mental burden of students who litigate these cases, it represents an unprecedented power grab and a disregard for students’ autonomy. Students should not have to worry about their academic futures being litigated by admin, who are less likely to see eye-to-eye with students.

    • As GPSG President I will work to return the time honored tradition of peer judiciation to UNC Chapel Hill.

• Surveillance Auditing

  • Over the past two years, UNC has experienced an uptick in campus surveillance, especially during times of protest. After the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on UNC’s campus last year, numerous security cameras and an enormous metal fence were installed around the quad, creating an authoritarian vignette on our campus. Last year Indigenous professor Larry Chavis was fired after his lectures were secretly recorded by Panopto cameras. In the summer of 2023, ~270 security cameras were installed in residence halls. UNC has also employed technology like Social Sentinel in the past to monitor students who were protesting the confederate Silent Sam statue.

  • As GPSG President, I will push for transparency and formalized policies around the location, purpose, and working status of video and audio surveillance equipment on campus in order to protect freedom of speech on campus.

  • I will consistently advocate for graduate students’ freedom of speech in an increasingly monitored environment.

• Financial disclosure

  • The work we do as researchers and instructors at UNC Chapel Hill generates income for the university. The work the university pays for with the income we generate ought to reflect the stated goals and priorities of the university, encapsulated in the university motto: Lux, Libertas; light, liberty. Disclosure of the university’s financial stakes is a prime example of the transparency necessary to reduce the moral injury we face as contributors to the wealth the university uses to invest in economic movements.

    • As GPSG President I will move to expand the guidance committee for the endowment to defacto include all the staff, student, and faculty body to ensure maximal transparancy with regards to the impact UNC Chapel Hill’s funding has on our local and global communities.

• Environmental Safety Testing

  • As of January 2023, UNC’s Environment, Health, and Safety department discovered lead in water fixtures in 125 buildings on campus. Since then, there has been little to no follow-up on what UNC is doing to alleviate this issue and whether or not water on campus is truly clean and safe.
  • NC State University recently identified polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in one of their buildings on campus (Poe Hall), and extended testing to identify PCBs over EPA standards in 23 of 27 sites tested. PCBs are known human carcinogens and are potentially linked to >200 cancer cases of individuals who studied or worked in Poe Hall. Both UNC and NCSU have been around for centuries and therefore have higher potential for building materials that were once considered safe to contain harmful chemicals.

  • As GPSG President, I will advocate for increased transparency about the safety of campus water fixtures and push UNC administration to take a rigorous approach to environmental safety.

  • I will also advocate for UNC to develop a plan to test for PCBs in older campus buildings, especially ones built during the era when PCBs were commonly used.

Community-Centered Approach

• Issues encountered by a graduate student in one department likely have echoes of similar issues occurring in other departments. Interdepartmental consideration of the systemic roots of problems impacting graduate student success are key factors towards reducing such burdens.
• Graduate student success is contingent on support provided by the university in terms of facilities and maintenance, staff in libraries and research cores, and the faculty for whom we work as researchers and teachers.
• Futhermore, the communities most impacted by the redirection of funds from community support organizations to policing on campus must be priotized.

  • As GPSG President I will strengthen the relationships between these stakeholders to promote the wellbeing of the university.

Acknowledgments

Policy writing contributed by Avery Baker, UNC Chapel Hill Public Policy Graduate Student. Many thanks!

Sponsored by the Campaign for Nyssa Tucker