Ritter shares thoughts on Syracuse Statement, Academic Strategic Plan at GSO

Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Syracuse University Provost Gretchen Ritter shared her perspective on the university’s upcoming Academic Strategic Plan and “Syracuse Statement” at Wednesday’s Graduate Student Organization Senate meeting, answering several questions from graduate students.

Ritter said the “Syracuse Statement” is intended to inform policy-making rather than be policy itself. She said commitment to academic freedom is a central value of the university, and emphasized the importance of discussing issues SU has had surrounding freedom of speech.

Graduate students have protections and freedom of speech in their roles as instructors, she said. Ritter said part of this academic freedom is based on “disciplinary expertise.”

Jocelyn McKinnon-Crowley, a Mass Communications academic program senator, responded with the notion that limiting expertise to be within certain disciplines separates individuals from their humanity and community-based work. Ritter asked her to clarify what she meant by community-based work.

“When you think about doing work to promote social good, that comes with understanding who you are as a person and how you perpetuate societal norms in the world and not just who you are as an instructor,” McKinnon-Crowley said.

Ritter said academic freedom has forever been grounded in a notion of expertise, and disciplinary committees are in place to determine the “rights and wrongs” of research and teaching in the classroom. Ritter said McKinnon-Crowley’s stance is a “classic feminist perspective” that she understands and said she personally is “quite sympathetic to.”

McKinnon-Crowley asked the Provost what specific steps are being implemented to involve and protect graduate students within the ASP, expressing concern that the university’s commitments feel “unfunded.”

The university tries to avoid unfunded mandates, working with each college and school to determine sustainable models to reach goals, Ritter said. She said graduate students have been involved with the ASP along the way in working groups across all SU’s colleges.

Ritter said she is hopeful graduate students will feel the university is committed to excellence and academic research.

GSO’s Senate also passed a resolution at its Wednesday meeting to establish a new catering policy in an attempt to reduce unnecessary food waste.

Dominic Wilkins, senator at-large, presented the Climate Action Committee’s proposal for new catering guidelines, which he said was derived “pretty heavily” from SUNY ESF’s sustainable catering guidelines. Senate members recognized that certain recommendations, such as food items purchased directly or indirectly by GSO being entirely plant-based by 2030, in the proposal were “aspirational.”

The CAC has been working on a “major project” that involved mapping the “disparity” between outdoor recycling and compost facilities on SU’s campus versus those on SUNY ESF’s. The committee found and presented in the fall semester that SU does not have a “materially present” commitment to recycling and composting.

Becca Vinciquerra, GSO’s director of external affairs, said she supports the catering guidelines resolution “from a sustainable aspect,” but that the policy is “almost impossible to enforce.”

Vinciquerra said the resolution requires a “realistic” and “logistical” approach, citing her previous experience as director of health and sustainability of the University at Albany’s Student Association. She said her concerns are not with CAC’s proposal itself, but rather with being able to obtain its requests.

“Some of the guidelines I have brought to campus catering, I have received pushback on,” she said. “This only shows that the GSO ought not be responsible for the practices of SU catering and how this holistic application is truly one which requires a bottom-up approach.”

Vinciquerra said it cost her $300 to get three pans of pasta from SU Catering for GSO’s last meeting, explaining that GSO is “locked in” to SU Catering due to lack of funds. She also mentioned that GSO has no control over how catering companies source their food.

She said her support of the proposal would “exponentially increase” if it clearly denoted protections against impeachment if the policies were not able to be upheld.

The senate amended the resolution accordingly, resolving that “given the constraints to which the GSO is bound due to University policy, that when working with SU Catering, the inability to fully adhere to the guidelines in Appendix A not be construed as an impeachable offense,” according to the amendment.

The amended resolution to establish GSO’s catering policy passed with 30 senate members voting yes — three voting no and zero abstaining.

SUNY ESF Graduate Student Association’s director of external affairs, Amy Owens, and GSA representative Maria Loughran were present at the meeting and offered suggestions regarding GSO’s sustainability efforts.

Loughran said ESF has a program whereby campus events can be certified as sustainable.

“There’s a whole section that includes local Syracuse restaurants and caterers that have been deemed appropriate — vegan, vegetarian, equality-oriented organizations. So maybe that is a great reference to start,” she said.

Owens said she and ESF’s GSA would be “happy to collaborate and work more directly on this.”

Other business:

• The senate passed a resolution to redistribute the GSO Professional, Academic and Creative Work Grant Program in response to the financial needs expressed by graduate students.
• The senate passed a resolution tasking its finance committee to assess the “feasibility and practicality” of compensating GSO senators.
• The senate passed the following funding requests:
  $1450 in special funding for the Geology GSO to fund the annual CNY Earth Science Student Symposium.
  $1500 in special funding for the Sigma Upsilon chapter of Chi Sigma Iota, the international honors society for counselors, to fund the purchase of cords and stoles, a guest speaker and catering for commencement.
  $475 in special funding for GSO’s Comptroller to fund the purchase of a flight to Syracuse necessary to present the GSO’s budget.
• The senate sent a start-up funding request of $300 from the Nutrition GSO back to the finance committee, due to the passing of the proposed catering guidelines resolution.