The Graduate Student Council (GSC) passed a bill written jointly with the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) calling upon the University to urge the Santa Clara County District Attorney to decline to press charges against Daily reporter Dilan Gohill ’27 at its Monday meeting.
The bill, intended to protect student journalism, originally passed in the GSC last week but underwent revisions in the UGS and was subjected to another vote Monday. It passed unanimously after brief deliberation.
Gohill was arrested in June along with 12 student protestors while reporting for The Daily on a pro-Palestinian student group’s occupation of the president’s office. The bill calls upon the University to urge Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen to decline to press any legal charges against Gohill — which include felony burglary, vandalism and conspiracy — and to reconsider Gohill’s referral to the Office of Community Standards (OCS).
The bill also expresses support for The Daily to revise and communicate changes to journalistic training to prevent such incidents from reoccurring. The bill states that Gohill had a “lack of clear guidance from his leadership at the Stanford Daily” and “acted in good faith.”
The GSC also deliberated a Union Relations Bill, which calls upon the University to accept the Stanford Graduate Workers Union’s (SGWU) position that a five-year 12-month funding guarantee should be a part of graduate workers’ contracts.
The bill received mixed opinions. GSC co-chair and fifth-year chemistry Ph.D. student Emmit Pert expressed doubts about its effectiveness.
“I’m struggling to see the actual impact this bill will have,” Pert said. Other council members raised concerns about the bill’s potential implications for GSC-University relations.
“We’re not here to make the University happy. We’re here to represent the students’ needs,” said councilor Pamela Martinez MFA ’25 in response to the concerns.
Pert also raised concerns about the legal implications of the bill. “We should get legal opinion before we do something that potentially has legal consequences,” Pert said. The GSC plans to consult legal experts before an anticipated vote on the bill in next week’s meeting.
Councilors also received updates from Residential & Dining Enterprises representatives regarding wine and beer licenses for the pub and graduate housing, approved funding requests for student organizations and introduced a bill to cut the GSC’s dining costs that has yet to receive a vote.