Opinion

GUEST ROOM | Graduate Students: Who are We?

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Think of a graduate student. We’re the chemistry teaching assistant who gave you consistent B’s on lab reports and the first-year writing seminar instructor who invited you to their office to talk about how they could support you. We’re the sleep-deprived, scatter-brained, sixth-year, glassware-dirtying person that you meet each morning. We’re the second-year Ph.D. student crying in an office as we stress about our upcoming qualifying exam. We graduate students interact with nearly every group on campus, but we’re often dismissed as an isolated, uninvested population that is just here to finish a degree.

Opinion

GUEST ROOM | Cornell Needs to Be More Transparent About Mental Health Initiatives

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Last month, the Cornell administration announced a review of our campus’s mental health system. Throughout the last year, Cornell Graduate Students United has campaigned for just such a review. Over 900 graduate students signed our petition asking for an external review of the system, in addition to other demands, and we are glad the administration has finally acknowledged the mental health crisis on campus. Whether or not the proposed mental health review succeeds, however, depends on its structure. As it stands, there is almost no public information on the administration’s proposed mental health review.