The Daily Orange’s story concerning the GSO’s decision to remove all graduate employees from the employee health insurance plan frames the news as the GSO vs. SGEU. What’s absent from the story is 24 people decided to change 1,200 graduate employee’s health insurance despite lacking knowledge of the full plan or guarantees of a future subsidy, voting in a reckless manner and completely perverting democratic principles. The so-called facts concerning the savings the switch would bring are extraordinarily subjective, varying radically based on individual circumstances. The real story is one where student voices expressing concern over the precarity this switch would bring were silenced.

Graduate employees still don’t know who their future provider is, nor do they know details of the plan. Instead, they were given a single piece of paper lacking detailed information on the proposed plan. In contrast, the currently available SU Blue and Aetna Student Health Plans are 10 and 22 pages respectively.

Actual debate on Resolution 18.XX, a question session with representatives from the graduate school and debate on proposed amendments to the resolution all occurred in less than an hour. The meeting began at 5:35 p.m. and the resolution was passed at 6:55 p.m. Thirty minutes of that time was a presentation on the proposed new plan by an outside consultant, meaning over the course of an hour and a half, the GSO moved from seeing a limited set of plan details, to a question session to debating a resolution. The GSO voted to accept an insurance plan seen for the first time in less time than a Tuesday/Thursday class session.    

The GSO radically broke procedure by dissolving resolution 16.05, which was passed to prevent the situation that occurred Wednesday, ensuring a referendum be held for graduate employees affected — a referendum that never happened, because the administration and GSO executive board failed to do their job.  

Senators ended debate before over 100 students could ask questions, meaning a small group of individuals voted without abdicating information or critical consideration about how this decision will impact graduate employees’ lives. Regardless of feelings concerning the validity of the plan, this blatant refusal from the GSO body and administration to listen to constituents’ concerns demonstrates that while 24 individuals voted to make this change, the decision which affects 1,200 graduate workers and their dependents was anything but democratic.

Sincerely,

Hunter Thompson

MA Candidate Graduate Student Instructor

Published on April 8, 2018 at 6:59 pm