What is GSU?

GSU is a new type of organization allowing graduate students to come together and build a community that can adequately take action to address the problems facing graduate student workers. GSU creates collective and non-hierarchical democratic means of representation and modes of action to transform the lives of graduate students and the conditions and nature of work at the University of Chicago.

What does GSU do?

For many years now, the administration has taken advantage of graduate student inaction. Despite the university's reliance on our labor, for many years we have been treated as an expendable resource. Our own feelings that we are individually expendable have helped to make this possible. But by coming together to build a community around our shared needs and demands, graduate students can realize that the problems we face are systemic and widespread. GSU is dedicated to the creation of equitable and democratic practices at the University so that all students and employees can thrive in their lives and their work.
As graduate students united we will:

  1. Create an open forum for the discussion of our shared needs, needs around which we can unite: from health care and a living wage to improved working conditions and beyond;
  2. Create new, independent and student-run means of responding to the administration's policies;
  3. Create means of effecting proactive change rather than merely allowing the administration to set the agenda unilaterally for the university community.

How do we do it?

Talk.
We build our community by talking to one another, discussing the problems we face and the solutions we can enact. We commit to listen to our fellow student-workers, and we commit to speak ourselves.
Meet.
We accomplish our regular organizational tasks at weekly meetings where we make decisions through a consensus-based process. There is no separate executive board. For this reason all members have the opportunity to take on the responsibilities of running the organization by attending these meetings.
Click.
When making our most important decisions, we broaden the scope of participation to include members unable to attend weekly meetings. Upon joining GSU, all members join an online network through which we discuss and vote on questions that are important to us.
Act.
And together, we act. We hold rallies and educational fora. We work to improve our lives and labor. When necessary, we withhold that labor. And above all, as members of Graduate Students United, we hold our heads high.