No One Wants to Join the Harvard GSAS Student Council
Though the GSC is the official student government of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, it has been plagued with problems of meager attendance and recruitment, with dozens of positions regularly going vacant.
Laura E. König, the president of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Council, came to the body’s first fall meeting in September with a mission: fill some of the GSC’s more than 80 open positions.
She had a compelling pitch, telling attendees about how fun and fulfilling her time on the council had been. “We would really love to fill these positions,” she pleaded. “Those are great roles, and they give you a seat at the table.”
But it has increasingly become a hard sell.
Though the GSC is the official student government of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences — responsible for advocating for graduate students, allocating research grants, and organizing social events — it has been plagued with problems of meager attendance and recruitment, with dozens of representatives and several major executive positions regularly going vacant.
Last semester, the GSC failed to elect a candidate for president during its semesterly general elections, and left over half of its executive board positions unfilled. And most of the GSC’s recent meetings were spent hosting special elections for open positions rather than working on student advocacy.
In interviews, more than a dozen GSAS students said they were unfamiliar with the council’s work or purpose and added they were too busy to consider serving.
And though König, a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience, has committed to prioritizing engagement and communication with GSAS students this semester, she acknowledged that doing so is difficult without a chair of communications to spearhead those efforts.
The other vacant positions include co-chair of support, three at-large representatives, and nearly 80 program representatives, who are responsible for advocating for students in their degree programs.
Under the GSC’s constitution, the council is required to keep holding special elections until the executive and at-large positions are filled — meaning that at the current rate of recruitment, the GSC is likely to spend most of the fall semester trying to fill its ranks.
And in April, when presidential elections begin, the whole process will start again.
‘Not Visible’
Attendance at the GSC has seen better days.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, meetings drew a much higher turnout, according to GSC treasurer Fardin Aryan, a Ph.D. candidate in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
“Wall-to-wall packed,” he said. “From what I heard. I wasn’t there.”
But now, students say they are mostly unaware about the GSC’s function — something that drives them away from running for positions or attending meetings.
“My impression was like, what is it? What does a graduate school student council get done? What does the student council in general get done? So I haven’t really looked into it,” said Shawn C. Holstein, a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the East Asian Studies program.
Despite advertising via email lists, flyers, and social media the GSC has struggled to communicate its purpose to rank-and-file GSAS students.
“I’m not informed of what it does, what it means. I think that's reason number one,” said Rajiv K. Swamy, a first-year student in the Computational Science master’s program.
“It’s not visible, you know,” said Adan Ramirez-Figueroa, a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Romance Languages and Literature. “It’s very hard to find what they are doing if you are not actively looking for it.”
Many students said they were simply more concerned with their personal research or academics than getting involved in student government.
“I only attend a two-year master’s program, and I’m also an international student,” said Roujia Li, a master’s student in East Asian Studies. “So I think my major issue right now is getting used to the workload of my seminars.”
“Maybe I will participate more in next semester, or next year, but this year I want to focus more on my own studies,” Li added.
Kenneth S. Alyass, a Ph.D. candidate in History, said that for students in the later years of their program, “it gets to a point where you don’t want to make the University the entirety of your social network and community.”
“You want to branch out,” he said. “You want to be part of the city of Boston.”
König said the GSC has tried to reach students by posting on Instagram and sending messages to a GSAS-wide Slack, but many students said those communications slipped through their inboxes. And König said she recognizes the need for more “face-to-face” recruitment efforts.
“What really got me into the GSC was when I actually met up with people and got to know them,” König said. The council is currently planning a meet-and-greet event for all representatives in late October.
Ethan Sontarp, who is now running for chair of communications, said it took a face-to-face referral from a friend to get him involved.
“There’s another student in my department who is active in the GSC, and so he encouraged me to look into it, if I was interested in learning more about how the Graduate School functioned and wanted to give back and build community,” said Sontarp, a first-year Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Science and Engineering.
Now, he said, most of his friends know about the GSC — because he makes them know about it.
“Only because they’re around me, they’re aware, because I would talk about it,” Sontarp. “But I’m not a good representative of the general student body.”
‘Matters of Mutual Concern’
The GSC sets lofty goals for itself: as GSAS’ official student government, its stated purpose is to support and recognize the challenges facing graduate students.
“Through monthly open meetings, the GSC brings together students across disciplines to raise matters of mutual concern,” its website reads. “The group also provides a vehicle for students and administrators to have a meaningful dialogue about the issues that shape the graduate experience at Harvard.”
And there are indeed “matters of mutual concern”: grad students face low program stipends, high costs of living, and a culture of harassment in faculty advising relationships. They take on heavy workloads as teaching fellows and face a difficult job market, with a decreasing number of graduates entering tenure-track positions.
But the GSC’s recruitment problems have made it difficult for the group to prioritize advocating on students’ behalf.
One particular issue is that of the GSC’s 138 program representatives, only 61 were filled as of August, with several major programs — including Economics, Computer Science, and Physics — lacking any representation at all.
Previously, all program representatives would be required to attend each meeting. But attendance dropped after the GSC eliminated the attendance requirement as of 2023.
If the GSC saw increased student participation, König said, it would see “more voices, more diversity” at meetings. “It just makes the process more and more effective,” she said.
“It makes such a difference knowing what the students want instead of guessing what people might want based on your own experience,” König added.
Another obstacle is that the body must run — and rerun — special elections for unfilled positions, which often takes time away from discussing substantial issues in open meetings.
Still, at the GSC’s latest open meeting — following nominations for special elections — the body did devote some time to briefly discussing the advocacy issue of the month: professional development.
Max Street, a divisional representative for the Humanities, raised that funding for graduate students to pursue professional goals “seems incredibly arbitrary” across departments.
Aden Solway, a former GSC Vice President, raised the idea of a fund to support students’ transition into the job market — similar to a discontinued professional development fund that GSAS used to offer. Another attendee echoed Street’s complaints of inconsistent departmental funding.
But by then, it was past 7:30 p.m. and people had begun filing out. The meeting was over.
—Staff writer Maeve T. Brennan can be reached at maeve.brennan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @mtbrennan.
—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.