Grad Students Fill Gap With GAPSC

The Graduate and Professional Schools Council (GAPSC) is picking up the pieces and hoping they fit somehow.

The student group is struggling to fit together the disparate interests of the students of the nine graduate schools and define its own role within the University.

Members of the conglomerate group say that unless they manage to unify the very diverse students into one community this year, the council may well self-destruct. The council was formed three years ago to promote unity among Harvard's many graduate schools.

The council members, who are elected either from the student body of each school as a whole or selected from individual student governments, say that they can make such a unified whole only by becoming a powerful social and political force in graduate student life.

Because many of the nine schools are geographically isolated--with the medical science schools a 20-minute bus ride away from most of the other schools--graduate and professional students say that they have little idea of what is going on at the other schools. They add that a unified graduate student voice will be better able to influence University policy and implement changes.

"We want to be able to share our ideas, our thoughts and our experiences with the other grad schools," says James Schaefer, former vice-chairman of the Council and currently a representative from the Businesss School.

"It's a shame to be stuck in [one's] own corner and not know what else is going on," says Alice Finn '84, a Law School student and the current chair of the council.

Three years ago a group of graduate students banded together to form a group to meet these concerns, says David Schwartzenbaum, a Law School alumnus who helped found the council, After being recognized by each of the graduate schools' student councils, in the fall of 1986 the students drafted a constitution which allows each school to select representatives as its council wishes.

Early last year, the council representatives stepped up their efforts to bring the graduate students together. The GAPSC organized social functions, service projects and intramural sports to acquaint graduate students with one another.

But the council encountered one major obstacle.

Because the student group was not recognized by the University, many of its proposals became trapped in the workings of the various schools' bureacracies.

"We wanted to rent Mem Hall [for a dance], but we couldn't, because no one school could take responsibility for the party," says Finn, who is in her fourth-year year in the Law School's Fletcher program.

So early in December, GAPSC sent a letter to President Bok asking that the University officially recognize the council and give them a faculty advisor to act as mediator and be responsible for the group's projects.

"Our main goal is to get full recognition," Schaefer says.

Right now we have quasi-recognition."

Schaefer and Finn will meet with Bok later this month to discuss obtaining a faculty advisor and to ask Bok's opinion of what GAPSC's role in the University should be in the future.

"We want to sit down with Derek Bok and say 'Let us be a part of this University," says Schaefer.

To begin to tie together the graduate schools, the council has held several social functions, including a formal at the Boston Harvard Club and another social last year. But council members feel that occasional social functions will not help tie together the schools intellectually or permanently, even if holding dances does publicize the group's existence.

Currently the graduate student council is investigating ways of fostering the sense of community it sees as its primary objective. One of the most active programs thus far has been a project to help freshman choose their concentrations through understanding what each graduate school teaches.

The project is scheduled to culminate in a forum held in February where graduate students will explain their schools to undergraduates attending the forum and answer questions from the audience.

The Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) has been very receptive to the idea, says Meg Schellenberg, the council representative and employee at the FDO in charge of the program. The Divinity School student says this year the forum will replace a freshman career night with the faculty deans of the graduate and professional schools which has drawn few students in the past three years.

While the council has made considerable attempts to start various service projects, so far these initiatives have failed. Last year a representative of Phillips Brooks House, the community service organization, visited a meeting of the council and persuaded the group that they would only be duplicating PBH's efforts, so the council is now trying to form a graduate chapter of the public service organization.

Council members say that setting up a graduate chapter of PBH would instill camaraderie among the different schools as well as allow students of different graduate schools apply their expertise in public service work. They add it would also help dispel the stereotype that some of the graduate schools churn out "money-hungry materialists".

"The effects of a de-centralized system are painfully obvious in other schools' attitude towards the Business School," Schaefer says.

Graduate students not involved with the council praise the idea of establishing such a public service program.

"I think it's definitely a good idea," says Yolanda Berrara, a student at the Kennedy School. "PBH would be able to use the expertise of grad students very well."

"If they set something like that up, I'd almost certainly find time for it," says Lishan Aklog '85, a medical student.

But the council member in charge of coordinating the PBH project says it is not progressing as quickly as planned, and that no definite date has been set for the chapter's formation. Later this month, in an informal arrangement, graduate students will cook meals for and help staff Rosie's Place, a local homeless center.

Atoosa Pezeshgpour '82, the medical student who is organizing the PBH program, says that other than the project with Rosie's, the council currently only helps students get in contact with PBH.

"Right now...there are only limited numbers of students interested," Pezeshgpour says, adding that she expects more students will volunteer for the chapter when it is more widely publicized.

But the PBH chapter alone will probably not sufficiently meld the nine graduate schools into a cohesive conglomerate, council members say. Schaefer has suggested that the group ask undergraduates to join to further unify the University's students. While the council has not officially considered this proposal, Schaefer says that he has received positive feedback from his colleagues.

And GAPSC is still hoping to draw some of the students together through social events. Last month the council sponsored a "summit meeting/cocktail party" open to all representatives of the university's graduate schools' governments. While council members say that the event was not as well attended as they hoped, they add that those who did attend were enthusiastic.

GAPSC this year also started a weekly "happy-hour exchange" between the graduate schools. Each week, the happy hour is held at a different graduate school's student pub and the council posters for the event at every graduate school. Since its inception in early October, the program has met with success, say coordinators of the project. The happy hours have also encouraged graduate students to visit other schools' pubs informally, council members say.

The council also plans to begin an intramural program between the schools, and an "events line" for the University, with phones located in an office at the Graduate School of Education, will begin operating next week.