Wednesday, May 20, 1998
Newly elected GSA President Joanna Brooks talks of future
GSA: After hard fight during campaign, leader faces major
issues
By Ann Hawkey
Daily Bruin Contributor
Monday night, Joanna Brooks was elected president of the
Graduate Students’ Association (GSA), in an election marred by
controversy and complaints.
By encouraging more participation among graduate students, as
well as improving relations with USAC and SAGE, Brooks hopes to
bridge the gap between graduate student government and the graduate
students it is supposed to represent.
Last Friday, Brooks talked about the future of GSA as a body
that responds to its members’ needs and provides the support and
advocacy necessary for the issues affecting them most.
Why did you decide to run for GSA president?
GSA, for many years, did not seem to have any direct relevance
to me, and I think that’s a feeling a lot of graduate students
have. This year, when the current set of GSA officials got
entangled in the polling efforts of SAGE, it caused a lot of us to
reassess our opinions of GSA.
I had served briefly on the (ASUCLA) communications board a few
years ago, and I knew Chris Tymchuk, who was president a few years
ago, and my involvement with GSA then showed me that there was a
lack of participation. We held a town meeting and no one came; it
was about the chancellor search, and no one showed up.
My own experiences on the advisory board were such that
sometimes you felt like your advice was worth something, and other
times you didn’t feel like it was heard.
So here we are and all of a sudden (GSA) decides to get active
and have a poll, which in my opinion was ill-advised, and many grad
students saw it even as hostile, but it confirmed my feeling that
if we’re going to have an active GSA, then GSA needs to be actively
responsible, and actively responsive to the needs and concerns of
its constituents.
What are your goals for GSA?
There’s a lot of house-cleaning that needs to be done in terms
of making sure that GSA is efficient and effective. For example,
something that Meredith (Neuman) and I have talked about is making
sure people at the departmental level have the opportunity to elect
their own representatives to the GSA Forum. Forum is a great,
powerful body. However, one of the sad by-products of the past
couple years has been a lack of proper elections to Forum, and that
only kind of calcifies students’ feelings of distance and
powerlessness.
As for the central office, we should be more focused as an
advocacy body because that’s what we are called on to do. We’ve
been pretty caught up, it seems, in maintaining GSA; we need to
sharpen it and use it as a tool.
What programs already underway do you hope to continue working
on?
GSA gives away a lot of support for grad student publications,
like academic journals that grad students put out, and I want to
make sure that that continues and that more people will have these
opportunities. We fund Melnitz Movies, and that will continue.
Also, continuing and enhancing our presence in Sacramento; our
EVP handles that, making sure we have appropriate representation
for our students.
What do you think are the most important issues facing graduate
students today?
Without a doubt, the continuing refusal of our own
administration to respect the fact that a majority of academic
student employees want collective bargaining and want union
representation, and the fact that the administration at this point
refuses to acknowledge the fact that grad students even work here
as employees – that’s a big one.
That’s probably the biggest issue facing grad students, but
that’s not somewhere where GSA should intervene. That needs to be a
discussion between the employee and the employer.
Historically, GSA has supported SAGE. It’s a UCSA (University of
California Student Association) advocacy agenda item to support
academic student employee unionization, so whatever advocacy GSA
can maintain would be appropriate.
The other big issue, and it’s not unrelated, is, of course,
diversity and access for women and people of color to graduate
education.
What types of relationships do you plan to pursue with other
organizations?
I look forward to developing a stronger relationship with USAC,
and think in some ways GSA can learn from USAC how to develop
programs and how to become an active body, and hopefully we can
develop strong communication.
Then there are other national and statewide graduate student
bodies, like UCSA and NAGPS (National Association of Graduate and
Professional Students). NAGPS was great last year when there were
some tax code changes that really would have affected grad
students; NAGPS led advocacy of grad students in the U.S. House and
Senate, and certainly, we should be a part of that action.
How do you plan to deal with the problems of low voter turnout
and lack of involvement among graduate students?
Grad students are such an interesting bunch of people. We’re
grown up people – we have families, some of us have spouses, we’ve
got children, we’re all at a very intense point in our careers and
professionalization, and at UCLA we’re incredibly diverse. We’ve
got everything from law students, to artists, to engineers and it’s
difficult sometimes to conceive of common ground, even more so to
mobilize this huge bunch of people.
So hopefully, by being realistic, first of all, about what an
active GSA membership should look like and by identifying the
common ground where we can work together. We can kind of target and
focus, and make people feel like their voice matters.
A lot of people say, "Oh, they’re just apathetic," and I don’t
buy that. It’s like when I teach students and they say, "I’m lazy,"
that’s just bull. Someone told you that you were lazy. Apathetic is
baloney; there is another issue, and I think it’s that people want
to feel like their part is meaningful.
What kind of relationship do you want to form with SAGE?
SAGE does what SAGE does and they do it well in terms of
representing academic employees in employment issues. They are a
union – they have unique legal standing and unique legal know-how
in terms of dealing with employment issues. We do student
issues.
Of course there is overlap. There are academic student employees
that are students and some of them are grad students and I think we
can provide the kind of advocacy and support that’s within – that’s
constitutionally appropriate – for GSA.
We can advocate, and the poll gave GSA information that its
members are supportive of SAGE, and I think we have important
questions as GSA to ask the chancellor about how well he respects
grad student voices at UCLA. But they are two very separate bodies
and that’s how I see our relationship.
The chancellor needs to deal directly and responsibly with his
employees here, and GSA is not an acceptable alternative to that,
nor should it seek to present itself as an alternative, nor should
it be seen by anyone in the community as an alternative means of
getting at the issue.
How do you feel about the questions that SAGE has raised
regarding GSA’s affiliation with the administration and its ability
to act as a mediator for the graduate students?
As for mediation, it’s totally inappropriate for anyone besides
the courts to position themselves as a mediator. There are a lot of
specific rules which apply to labor relations, which promote fair
and impartial negotiation of labor issues. That’s what governs the
unionization process. It’s a conversation that needs to happen
between the chancellor and the employees.
In terms of GSA’s affiliation with the administration, we have
an administrator that advises GSA – a nice guy, but technically an
administrator.
I don’t think that just because GSA operates out of a university
building with university advisory that means it can’t represent
grad students.
But the most important thing I think is that GSA needs to
recognize that even its well-intentioned gestures can be seen as
irresponsive to the needs of graduate students in this highly
contested labor context.