Graduate student government president Brady Harman talks goals

Brady Harman is a third year graduate student from Elkhart, Ind., working toward a dual law degree and masters of public administration through the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

He also serves as the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Organization, which is the representative student government for graduate students on campus.

GPSO currently serves around 10,000 graduate and professional students at IU.

GPSO’s role
The GPSO is the graduate equivalent of the IU Student Association, the undergraduate student government, and provides administrators with student perspectives.

“Whenever they want student input, they usually invite IUSA to appoint people to that committee and GPSO to appoint people to that committee,” Harman said.

Current initiatives
In recent weeks, Harman and his fellow GPSO members have focused on the formation of the new Media School as well as the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He said many graduate students are affected by new health care due to their experience working for the University as class instructors and receiving benefits from the University.

Harman said his administration is working on expanding the number of initiatives passed this year, as administrations of the past have been less active in passing bills.

On the whole, Harman said the administration has four main goals: professional development, diversity of experience, inter-campus relationship building and internal reorganization.

Professional development:
The group aims to focus on professional development and soft skills such as grant writing and pedagogical training.

Diversity efforts:
GPSO encourages diversity efforts, making sure that the programs and services on campus are inclusive, Harman said. “Many of our grad students are international students. Are their needs being met?”

Inter-campus relationship building:
“The next big thing that’s probably going to happen is higher education reform,” Harman said. “We’re looking at getting together in some fashion, the Big Ten universities and other grad student governments, not only to learn about their best practices and what they do as a student government but also to prepare any advocacy efforts.”

The effort to increase relationships within other student governments is something that Harman said has never been done before.

“That’s never happened on a grad level,” he said.

Internal reorganization:
“We’ve had a weird history,” he said. “We split from IUSA in the ‘80s or the ‘70s or something. We’re looking at really sort of stabilizing that.”

Problems facing grad students
Harman said the main problem facing graduate students on the IUB campus is the dual role as both student and employee.

“How do we meet our degree requirements, and how are we doing this work, and how are we being compensated?” Harman said. “We constantly have to look at that and reassess. Are we being treated fairly, or are we just the manual labor? Yes, the faculty is great, and they’re doing great things. This campus runs on the backs of grad students.”

Goals for the year
Harman said his personal goal is to complete the four main action items GPSO has outlined, but he also wants to increase campus-wide awareness of GPSO and its role on campus.

He said he wants “to build our awareness for students, so making sure people are aware of our organization and what it does on the student level, and then on the administrative level, consider us equally as the undergrads.”

Follow reporter Holly Hays on Twitter @hv_hays.