Grad student leaders retreat locally

Leaders from several graduate and professional schools discussed their roles at the University and the surrounding community at a retreat held in Bryn Mawr last Saturday. "The goal of the leadership retreat was to give these representatives a sense of their responsibility as leaders, both within the University community and without," said Graduate Student Associations Council board member Cheryl Butler, who helped organize the event. The Graduate and Professional Students Assembly invited the schools and organizations to send their presidents and leaders to the day-long retreat, rather than their regular GAPSA representatives, in order to connect more people with the central graduate governing body. During the retreat, Penn Program for Public Service Director Ira Harkavy spoke to the group of approximately 25 about how universities had strayed from their "original agenda to transmit knowledge as well as to serve the community," said Butler, an English graduate student. "He said that we drifted away from the second goal and we no longer serve the community," Butler said. Wayne Glasker, a former GAPSA chairperson and graduate student activist, explained the power structure at the University and the position of graduate student leaders within it, Butler said. The students discussed how to better incorporate multiculturalism into the classroom and improve communication between the schools during two workshops, said GSAC Chairperson Michele Grimm. Butler said that involving more people in the Graduate Perspective and providing e-mail access for all graduate students might help cut down on the isolation they often feel. "We're going to look into the status of e-mail within all the schools," Grimm said. The students also discussed creating a graduate student pub and "institutionalizing some place where we as graduate students can convene on campus," Butler said. Several students praised the retreat and the opportunity it gave them to exchange ideas with graduate students they had never worked with before. "It gave us a chance to talk with people, who if we had met before, we had only met for a short time," Grimm said. "We were able to really pool our resources and expertise," Butler said. "It helped us to create a community and helped us to understand why we are here. It helped us to see the bigger picture -- that we don't exist in a vacuum." Student Life Programs and GAPSA co-sponsored the retreat. GSAC was also involved in planning it.

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