Obi Afriyie served as parliamentarian for Syracuse University’s Student Association for two years. Now a graduate student, he will work as a liaison between the Graduate Student Organization and SA to improve communication between the two government bodies.

Afriyie, a GSO senator and graduate student in the School of Education, described the relationship between SA and GSO as “disconnected, but improving.” His new role as liaison is intended to open more streams of communication between the two organizations, GSO president Jack Wilson said.

Afriyie said the disconnect between the two student bodies stems from the fact that many graduate students aren’t as aware of SU’s culture in the same way undergraduate students are.

“SU students view grad students as those TAs that are always in line at Recess or the TAs who don’t answer their emails,” Afriyie said. “They don’t know what it’s like to be a graduate student. The university doesn’t offer a lot of support for them.”

Unlike Afriyie, most graduates spent their undergraduate years at different universities, he added. He also said graduate students often don’t know many of the services available to them, such as the Slutzker Center for International Services and the LGBT Resource Center.

Afriyie attends multiple SA meetings per month, reports back to the GSO and selects initiatives that he wants to work on with SA. The relationship between the two organizations is improving, but in “baby steps,” he said. He’s struggled to quantify improvement between the two organizations because it’s too early in the year to see the effect of his role, he added.

“I think that there just hasn’t been a lot of effort on the part of both the (GSO) senate and (SA) assembly to interact with each other,” Afriyie said. “A lot of times the only people who really ever interact are SA president and vice president, and then, like, the GSO president.”

Torre Payton-Jackson, SA’s public relations co-chair, said that her only source of communication with GSO has been through Afriyie. The communication he’s provided has been effective, and Payton-Jackson still described it as a “working relationship.”

Afriyie stood in front of the SA assembly on Nov. 5 and proposed a jointly-funded safety awareness initiative between GSO, SA and the Department of Public Safety. While taking questions from the SA assembly, he heard concerns about the feasibility and effectiveness of the initiative.

“I know how SA members are,” he said. “They’re very skeptical at first, but that’s just because they have passion. They have different viewpoints. I was one of them for four years.”

Wilson and former GSO president Rajesh Kumar said past communication between the two organizations has largely been centered around funding for Student Legal Services. The two communicate through the student governing council, which is a committee composed of leaders from GSO, SA, SUNY-ESF’s undergraduate and graduate student governments and the president of the Student Bar Association, Wilson said. The committee discusses what each organization is working on and ways that they can collaborate monthly.

This has been the main source of collaboration between GSO and SA, but it’s also been a point of contention, Kumar said. Last year, the GSO senate expressed frustration over a private meeting held by Chancellor Kent Syverud, then-SA President James Franco and Dolan Evanovich, senior vice president for enrollment and the student experience. Franco later said that there was no deliberate intent to leave GSO out of the conversation.

SA and GSO have coordinated off-campus transportation, Kumar said. They also sent similar resolutions shortly after President Donald Trump was elected that called on SU administrators to declare the university a “sanctuary campus.”

Besides these issues, collaboration between the two organizations has been scarce. Afriyie’s public safety initiative is the first that Wilson can remember between the two organizations in the past two years, he said.

Afriyie said that before the organizations can collaborate regularly, they have to find a common issue that both groups of students face. He presented in front of the SA assembly again on Monday, hoping to get funding for the safety awareness initiative.

“We’re all still students. We all get mad at the administration,” he said. “We all complain about the lack of student resources, and a united front is stronger than a divided one.”

Published on November 13, 2018 at 8:58 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326