Three GSS E-Board members, one office assistant resign amid tensions  

Editor’s Note: This article was last updated on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024 for clarity and additional information relevant to GSS. 

Three members of the University of Connecticut’s Graduate Student Senate (GSS) E-board and one office assistant have resigned from their positions during the 2023-2024 Academic Year, as of Jan. 17, 2024. All four members’ decisions to resign were heavily influenced by disagreements and policy issues among the E-board that endured for the majority of the Fall 2023 semester and continued into the Spring 2024 semester.  

GSS President Sandip Roy and an office assistant (who asked not to be named) resigned from their positions last November, while Vice President Mohsina Rahman and Communications Director Israt Jahan resigned earlier this week.  

Tensions first began in October 2023 after Usman Ali, a GSS senator representing the Electrical and Computer Engineering department (who has since graduated from UConn with a PhD in ECE), looked into the senate’s annual budget and noted an increase in E-board members’ pay along with a decrease in overall Tier II funding. As a Tier III organization, GSS allocates a substantial portion of its budget to the Tier II graduate student organizations each year.  

According to a document Ali presented at an Oct. 11 senate meeting, E-board members’ pay was increased by 97% in one year, including the president’s pay which increased by 216%. The funding budget for Tier II organizations was reportedly cut by 54% in one year as well. A Thanksgiving event, which had been hosted by GSS annually for more than 50 years, was canceled for 2023 due to concerns that the E-board would not have enough money to fund this event.  

Ali found that the president and treasurer positions were paid $10,971 and $7,555, respectively, for their work in Summer 2023. Ali also mentioned that the current president, Roy, had served as treasurer for the previous year.  

Ali, who served on the E-board the previous year, observed that past GSS meeting minutes made no mention of how much board members can be paid for summer work. After suggesting that a special committee be formed and tasked with suggesting an appropriate E-board pay, Ali deemed the increase in the president’s pay and concurrent reduction in Tier II funds to be unacceptable. Ali added that Roy should “resign from his current position” for having proposed the 2023-2024 budget “without disclosing/discussing actual cost for summer wages in Senate meetings.”  

Ali claimed that when Roy proposed to the senate to increase the treasurer and president positions’ pay, it was done in an understated way that went unnoticed and was approved as a result.  

“Since [Roy] proposed the budget [in a senate meeting prior to Summer 2023] and did not discuss the actual cost, he was not transparent in his way,” Ali said in an interview with The Daily Campus.  

When asked about such claims, Roy responded that the budget and GSS officers’ pay had been decided democratically among the senate.  

“All decisions regarding funding, including officer compensation and Tier II funding are decided by the Senate (and not by individual officers) in a democratic manner,” Roy wrote in a statement to The Daily Campus. “The publicly available meeting minutes of the GSS reflect that these decisions were unanimously approved last year by the Senate.”  

According to the Oct. 11 senate meeting minutes, the senate had voted in April 2023 on 20 hours a week for the president and 15 hours a week for the treasurer to work that summer. Roy clarified that the GSS bylaws previously stated that E-board members could get paid for working hours in the summer, without a specified number of hours, until the 2022-2023 parliamentarian proposed changes to the bylaws.  

When asked at the Oct.11 meeting his total pay for the 2023-2024 academic year, including Summer 2023, Roy answered that he would receive around $15,000 for the hours he worked. Roy was also asked to justify what he worked on for 20 hours per week in summer, to which he replied that he had been hiring an office assistant, filling out documentation for the Student Activity and Service Fee Advisory Committee (SASFAC), speaking with the Office of Finance and meeting with various administrative officials, along with other tasks mentioned in the June, July and August meeting minutes.

Luisana Duarte Armendáriz, a PhD student and treasurer of the English Graduate Association, said two senators represented the English department at the April meeting where summer hours were voted on. The senators, according to Duarte Armendáriz, were new to their roles and weren’t given enough time to read and understand the proposed changing of hours.  

“The changes in the bylaws weren’t circulated with enough time to see what actually was going to be voted on,” Duarte Armendáriz said. “These changes were pushed through without people being really informed of what the changes would entail.”  

Duarte Armendáriz began serving on the GSS procedures committee in November 2023, a committee tasked with investigating the matter further.  

The procedures committee met in early November and planned to initiate a recall vote for the president at the next senate meeting, requiring a ⅔ majority vote to pass. On the morning of Nov. 15, the day of the meeting, Roy resigned from his position via email, announcing that the office assistant had resigned as well. Upon resigning, Roy claimed that 80% of the GSS budget was spent on internal and external events rather than bigger concerns of graduate students regarding stipends, fees, housing, parking and transportation.  

“While I enjoyed serving the graduate student community, faithfully doing my job as their lead representative,” Roy said in his resignation email, “my decision to resign has been solidified by the harassment received at the hands of some members of the E. Committee, and the due process violations that were handed down to me by some members of the E. Committee and the procedures committee.”

According to the Nov. 15 meeting minutes, the office assistant mentioned having resigned due to board members assigning her duties that were outside the scope of her job description. The former office assistant also claimed to have received hostile and derogatory comments in emails from the rest of the board. At the meeting, she presented screenshots she acquired of emails exchanged between two board members months prior, when they were in the process of hiring someone for the office assistant position.  

The screenshots presented by the former office assistant show an E-board member speaking of the position’s requirements in a way that many interpreted as biased, citing physical strength as a factor to consider when hiring and suggesting that rather than solely interview the shortlisted female-majority candidates, the board should revert to the original applicant pool to consider additional candidates.  

Since November, UConn’s Office of Community Standards (OCS) has been investigating the incident after receiving reports regarding the matter to conclude whether or not university policies were violated. The investigation remains active and OCS did not respond to comment.  

In an interview with The Daily Campus, a board member involved in the investigation said that she and a few other members of GSS have been discouraged by the university from giving any comment on the matter. The board member did say, however, that the correspondence had been taken “out of context.”  

In regard to the office assistant’s resignation, Duarte Armendáriz said she believes the email screenshots were provided by Roy, an action reflecting his desire to “enact some sort of revenge on the E-board and the Senate that was ready to oust him.”  

At the Dec. 6 meeting, Bryan Greene was elected as the new president, after having served as a senator for more than a year. Greene mentioned his intention to hold a town hall in a hybrid format to receive input from more graduate students, according to the meeting minutes.

Also at the Dec. 6 meeting, Nicole Nelson, a graduate student who has served as an alternate GSS senator, noted a “lack of transparency and lack of leadership in the E-board,” according to the meeting minutes. Nelson then suggested that the entire E-board formally resign from their positions, except for the former president and current president.

Duarte Armendáriz acknowledged that the tensions between board members have delayed necessary procedures that were supposed to benefit the graduate community.  

“This has created a rift in the Senate, leading to delays in important procedures that benefit the larger Graduate Student population,” Duarte Armendáriz said in a statement to The Daily Campus. “I’ve been disappointed as to how a large part of the Senators conduct themselves in these meetings, being utterly disrespectful to each other.”  

On Jan. 2, the executive committee met and discussed the hiring of a new office assistant after the former office assistant’s resignation, ultimately deciding to start the search for candidates. A board member involved in the investigation mentioned apologizing to the former office assistant since the last meeting. Additionally, the committee plans to show the proposed changes to the bylaws at the next senate meeting. The changes, as discussed in the meeting minutes, will include a fixed pay for all E-board members for both the academic year and summer term with the expectation that all members will work over the summer for no additional compensation.  

As of Jan. 17, the vice president and communications director have both resigned from their positions.  

Update as of Thursday, Feb. 15: The OCS investigation regarding the screenshots of derogatory comments does not involve former president Sandip Roy.