At universities across the country, we often hear about undergraduate student governments, which help with fundraising, programming, and providing a voice for student bodies. But at USC, where nearly 57% of students are enrolled in a graduate or professional program, the Graduate Student Government (GSG) does just that for grad students.
GSG President KJ Queen and Vice President Sam Garza believe that the goal of the organization is to give a voice to different communities of graduate students at the University.
“Not a lot of schools have the numbers of graduate students that we have here at USC,” said Garza, a Ph.D. student at the USC School of Pharmacy. “It’s important to have a graduate student government here at USC to really get a perspective on all the different experiences that graduate students have.”
While the pandemic halted GSG’s organization’s in-person programming, they said they didn’t struggle too much with going virtual – the organization was still able to host events and engage with students from all around the world. During the pandemic, GSG has also been able to brainstorm new priorities, such as diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Quinn Anex-Ries, a graduate student pursuing a master’s in American Studies and Ethnicity, has been involved with GSG for four years and currently serves as the organization’s director of Diversity and Equity.
“Serving on GSG is a cool way to create immediate change to the campus community,” he said. “By addressing the issues of the grad students they are helping the greater campus community at large.”
This year Anex-Ries hopes to work toward several different diversity and equity initiatives, including ensuring students have adequate access to health insurance plans and easy access to campus healthcare.
“We are working on advocacy related efforts connected to increasing the transparency and timeliness of payments for Ph.D. students as well as advocating for increased stipends,” he said. “I am also serving on the Gender Affirming Care Team and the Student Health Advisory Council where I am working on issues related to the student health insurance plan.”
Anex-Ries emphasized that while GSG serves the particular needs of graduate students, the organization also hopes to enact change that impacts the greater USC community.
Recently, he was involved in student government’s work with CalFresh, a food grant program that helps students access food stamps on campus.
“GSG passed a resolution about CalFresh on campus in 2019,” Anex-Ries said. “Since then, we have been working with our campus partners on program implementation.”
For GSG, another primary goal this year is to help integrate graduate students into the wider campus population, especially after the last three semesters of virtual instruction kept many of them from experiencing campus in person. The organization hopes to point students in the right direction of campus resources, meet with administrative leaders to voice student concerns and provide funding both to students and graduate student organizations.
Naomi Rodgers, GSG’s vice-president of administration, oversees GSG’s funding branch. Rodgers, a third-year Ph.D. student studying environmental science and health, said in-person students pay a $40 semesterly fee and virtual students pay $20, noting that in the future, all graduate students will pay the same amount.
According to Rodgers, the pandemic made GSG re-evaluate how they used their budget. Rodgers said the organization knew it had a lot of student needs to accommodate and that their emergency fund was the best way to help students financially through the pandemic.
“We essentially reallocated a large portion of our budget to expand our emergency fund to help students facing financial issues due to COVID,” Anex-Ries said.
This year’s executive board also hopes to increase transparency and have a clear form of communication between GSG and the student body. In the past, students have expressed concerns that they have not always felt included in GSG communications; Queen and Garza wanted to make sure they changed that.
“When Sam and I took over the administrative role, we thought a lot about what we wanted to accomplish and one of the biggest things was transparency,” Queen said. “We looked at our own policies and how we could make it easier for students to understand, but also asked for the administration to be transparent as well.”
Dylan Wallis, a fourth-year Ph.D. student who studies molecular biology, currently serves as the director of academic affairs. Though this is Wallis’ first year serving in student government, he emphasized the importance of transparency and community-building.
“Some of us in the Ph.D. programs are here for six to seven years and having a community like this is very important,” Wallis said.
In his role, Wallis is looking at different ways that he and his team can support students in their academic lives both here at the University, but also after in their future careers post-graduation. In line with this goal, GSG has worked closely with the Office of Campus Wellbeing and Education, which offers a variety of services like consulting, workshops and training all provide support to students when they might need it the most.
“We serve as a place for students to go when they don’t know where they should be going,” Queen said. “So if they have a problem and they aren’t sure how to fix it, they can come to us.”