The Joint Committee of Faculty and Students proposed Friday that the Faculty Senate’s executive committee consider changes to the fees graduate students in the Columbian School of Arts and Sciences pay to continue their research.
The JCFS memorandum comes after the passage of a Student Association resolution in early September that advocates the elimination of the fee.
The fee, which is to be implemented in September 1999, will require CSAS doctoral and master’s degree candidates who are working on their dissertations to register for continuing research at a cost of $680 each semester.
Other GW schools already charge doctoral students one credit hour per semester, but CSAS has not implemented the fee because doctoral students in the humanities usually require more time to complete dissertations than students in engineering and other sciences.
SA graduate senator and resolution sponsor Emily Cummins (CSAS) said “the principles the SA believed in were accurately expressed in the (JCFS) memo.”
“These people did such a good job researching. They were really looking out for students and faculty,” Cummins said.
David McAleavey, faculty co-chair of JCFS, said he feels problems complicate the fee’s setup.
“It does seem to me that some kind of injustice is going on,” McAleavey said. “The way the fee is imposed is unfair to some Columbian School students.”
McAleavey said the Faculty Senate could respond negatively because the graduate fee is not an overriding concern.
“I have a feeling that they’ll be unable to see this as a University-wide problem because it mostly affects students in the Columbian School,” McAleavey said. “(The Faculty Senate) is not charged to deal with individual schools.”
Randy Papadopoulos, a history doctoral candidate who advocates the fee change, said he feels the University imposed the fee as a means of generating more revenue.
“To paraphrase the character Deep Throat in All the President’s Men, `They follow the dollars,’ ” Papadopoulos said. “The University saw a chance to go for $1 million in fees per year, after we had paid for all of the credit hours our degrees required and they went for it.”
McAleavey said he does not feel it is wrong to impose the fee to raise extra revenue, but he said the fee may be unfair to CSAS graduate students.
“The goal of raising money for the University is not a bad goal,” McAleavey said. “If graduate students are receiving services and not paying, other students suffer. That’s why this fee is legitimate in principle.”
Cummins said if the University charges a fee, it should specify where the money will be allocated.
“All tuition goes in a general fund and not necessarily to the individual schools,” Cummins said. “If they can say where the fee went, it helps us to accept the legitimacy of the fee.”
