GSC calls for housing affordability, pay continuation for workers

April 8, 2020, 9:38 p.m.

The Graduate Student Council (GSC) passed two resolutions — one in support of affordable graduate student housing and another advocating all Stanford service workers to receive pay continuation — during its meeting on Wednesday evening.

The first resolution, which was introduced by fourth-year law and international policy student Julia Neusner and was unanimously passed with the exception of Neusner’s abstention, calls for the University to develop long-term solutions to mitigate increasing costs of graduate student housing.

These “long-term solutions” include Stanford raising graduate students’ rate of pay in the upcoming 2020-21 academic year in proportion to on-campus housing costs as well as providing “financial support to offset moving costs to students being forced to move out of subsidized off-campus housing.” 

Neusner also introduced a second resolution that advocates for all Stanford service workers to receive pay continuation, as a number of subcontracted workers affiliated with the University have not received compensation after being laid off in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Councilors voted unanimously to pass the resolution with the exception of Neusner and fifth-year education Ph.D. student David Song, who abstained as sponsors of the resolution.

Furthermore, during this week’s Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) update, representatives Justin Akers and Eric Montell spoke about the future of the delayed housing lottery and graduate student meal plans.

“We are currently in the process of looking at the calendar to devise our new timeline for the lottery,” Akers said. “Things keep changing and coming out of nowhere, so we want to give the situation a bit of time to settle down before we make any definite decisions on the timeline.”

According to Akers, R&DE “hopes to have some announcement in the next week or two” about what the new lottery timeline will look like.

Montell, who spoke about graduate student meal plans, said graduate students who no longer want to use their existing meal plans are able to be refunded on the R&DE website.

“Just request a refund, and we’ll refund whatever the balance is,” he said. “You don’t have to be on campus to do this.

Contact Camryn Pak at cpak23 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Camryn Pak is a news managing editor. Contact her at cpak 'at' stanforddaily.com.

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