Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) is currently undergoing discussions with Fordham’s Graduate Student Workers Union (FGSW) regarding compensation for the Graduate Student Council (GSC) president and vice president positions, according to Justin Bell, vice president of Marketing and Communications at Fordham. The ongoing conversation has delayed GSC operations and created financial issues for the current GSC president, Anya Wang GSAS ‘26.

The discussion surrounds the question of whether the positions should be defined as work or service to the university. Bell provided The Fordham Ram with a fact sheet regarding “claims of the CWA or their members,” which was last updated on Sept. 12. The document defines  “service” as a position that provides “service to the GSAS student community” and “work” as a position that provides “work for the University.”

GSAS began discussing the distinction in the fall of 2024, and has since come to the conclusion that the positions constitute service, not work, according to Bell. However, this opinion differs from that of the FGSW, a chapter of the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

The fact sheet asserted that while the positions do not constitute work, the administration still believes they should be compensated. According to the fact sheet, the university does not believe the positions should be compensated as a Graduate Assistantship (GA), as they currently are — according to the Fordham website, a GA is a position that provides graduate students with employment in a specific department while also providing financial support. Typical GA duties include faculty assistance, tutoring and teaching — however, conversations regarding what this compensation should look like are ongoing, according to Bell. 

“While GSAS maintains that the GSC officer roles constitute service rather than work,

GSAS has always been willing to remunerate this service,” the fact sheet said. “It has been GSAS’ position that compensation should take the form of a flat-rate stipend, rather than a Graduate Assistantship, because the duties of GSC leadership positions differ significantly from other GA work assignments. Many universities provide some form of remuneration for serving on a student council; however, it is not common to treat these leadership positions as “employment.” It should be noted that in the GSC constitution, department and program representatives are similarly compensated with a stipend payment for the year in recognition of their service.”

Historically, the GSC president and vice president have been compensated according to the GSC constitution, which states, “For services rendered to the GSC, Officers shall receive a stipend for both the summer and academic year, which shall be fixed at the May budget meeting each year, but which shall be no less than the lowest full stipend of any graduate student worker and no higher than the highest full stipend of any graduate student worker in the GSAS.” 

Previously, their wages have been equal to the “Teaching Fellowship” stipend, meaning they received $37,000 distributed bi-weekly over a nine-month period, according to Wang. During the summer, students in these positions were also awarded a $5,000 Graduate Assistantship to cover the work that needed to be done during the summer break, Wang said.

In a meeting with then-GSAS Dean Ann Gaylin at the beginning of the 2025 spring semester, Wang, the then vice president of GSC, and Preston Carter, GSAS ’26, the then GSC president, were informed of the ongoing discussion regarding compensation for their positions, according to Wang. The officers were also given written confirmation about the possible changes in March 2025, according to Bell. 

In an interview with The Fordham Ram, Wang said that the GSC has experienced operational difficulties as a result of the ongoing conversation about the president and vice president positions.

While Wang had already been elected as the 2025-26 president, the GSC was unable to elect a vice president at the end of the spring semester, according to Wang. Wang said that the GSAS administration had not provided an updated job description for the role, resulting in them not being able to send out applications. 

“The GSAS has further harmed the functioning of the GSAS by all-but-removing the Vice President

Position,” Wang said in a letter that was sent to students and faculty on Aug. 22 titled: GSC Weekly, Issue 0.

As a result of not electing a vice president, Wang said she was expected to do the work of the vice president and the president over the summer, both of which include an 18-hour per week employment, while still receiving the same summer stipend amount. 

“In sum, the university’s offer—curiously, against their legal counsel’s own position that my work was not to be compensated—was for me to do double the work for pay that barely covered my cost-of-living, which would also have a high chance of not taking its intended effect due to not being able to elect a VP or representative body, since there was no job description of that position forthcoming,” Wang said in the letter.

In response to the GSC’s claims regarding the GSAS’s role in a vice president not being elected, the fact sheet said, “Given that the University and the CWA have not yet reached an agreement about the status of the GSC officers and the nature of their responsibilities, no job description can be provided.” The fact sheet further stated, “In May, GSC informed GSAS that they had decided to postpone holding elections for a VP or other department representatives until the status of the GSC officer positions is resolved.” 

Bell provided a statement from the administration regarding the inability of the GSC to elect representatives, who are compensated with a yearly stipend. “Moreover, GSAS’s request to receive a list of elected representatives has gone unanswered,” the statement said. “To ensure that representatives will be paid in a timely fashion, GSAS has reached out directly to departments and former reps to construct a list of elected representatives, and is committed to paying them the stipend for their service earlier this year than has been the past practice.”

The statement also said that communication with GSC regarding elections for representatives has been difficult.

“The communications from GSC have been confusing and contradictory since May,” the statement said. “Some communications and conversations have indicated that there have been no elections. Others have said that they have been held. Efforts by GSAS to receive written confirmation of the elections and the names of the electees were unsuccessful until Sep. 9. Even then, the list was only partial and did not reflect the full array of elections carried out at the departmental level.”

During an interview, Wang also said that she has faced personal financial challenges as a result of the conversations regarding her compensation and administrative oversight.

During the meeting with Gaylin, Wang said she learned that she would still receive the summer assistantship stipend, which had been previously guaranteed through her labor contract when she accepted the position as GSC president for the 2025-26 academic year, according to Wang. She said she was not informed at that time about the future of her wages for the nine-month academic year. 

Wang needed to use her summer stipend award letter as proof of income, however, she said she received the letter late. Wang sent an email to Gaylin, Seoyoon Chang, assistant dean of student professional development and GSAS and Meredith Nelson, Ph.D., director of Academic Admissions and Support at GSAS, when she still had not received the award letter as of May 9. Wang was set to start her summer position on May 28, and according to the labor contract she was supposed to receive the letter within 30 days prior to the start of her summer working period.

In the email, Wang informed the administrators that, as a result of receiving her award letter late and due to the absence of a vice president, she would be unable to accept the summer assistantship and therefore would not be able to continue her presidential duties over the summer.

According to the email exchange, Nelson and Gaylin both thought the other had sent the letter, resulting in it not being sent. Both parties offered their apologies to Wang and offered to send the letter at that time.

Wang said in a follow-up email that failure in administrative processes resulted in detrimental impacts on her mental health, and that she felt the administration had not taken the necessary action to acknowledge this.

“However, the fact that I was promised this very meager stipend and repeatedly ignored (that is, until I resigned from the position)—is disrespectful to me and my work,” Wang said in the email. “You have yet to acknowledge that—whether due to errors, neglect, or sundry other factors, I have struggled for a long time to live because of the risk in not having this letter. You were aware of this fact (and I have said even more in private to you), and nothing has changed as a result of my pleading.”

Wang said she has yet to receive any further emails from Nelson regarding the stipend. 

In the interview, Wang further said that by not sending the letter at least 30 days prior to the start of her summer position, the GSAS administration had violated the labor contract.

Because Wang did not hold the president position over the summer, agenda items that typically would have been conducted over the summer were not able to be completed, such as preparing the GSC budget, according to Wang. Wang also said that because the budget was not approved over the summer, certain resources, like the Student Support Grants, which fund graduate student research and are processed and approved by GSC, are not able to be funded.

Wang said she entered a series of grievance meetings with the administration starting on July 10, in which she began advocating for the reinstatement of her wages. She has had three meetings, but so far, she said the administration and GSC have yet to reach an agreement.

According to the “Graduate Assistant, Teaching Fellow, and Senior Teaching Fellow Pay Cycle,” Wang was set to receive her first paycheck as part of the fall 2025 teaching fellowship stipend on Aug. 8. However, she said the paycheck did not come and that she has yet to receive any form of payment from the administration.

According to Wang, her GSC position previously constituted her income. But now that she is no longer being compensated, she said she no longer has an income. As a result, Wang said she has had to rely on friends to help her pay rent and purchase food, as well as make a fundraising page. 

Wang said it is important for the GSC president and vice president positions to be compensated.

“The symbolism of what this position not being paid represents is really significant, and we should be looking at that, and from where I’m standing, I just disagree with the position of the university,” Wang said. “I think it’s enough work that it should be paid, it’s valuable enough that it should be paid.”

However, according to the statement provided by Bell, the administration agrees that the GSC president and vice president should be paid positions. 

“The amount of the compensation will be dependent on whether or not these positions are determined to be work. No matter what the determination is, the students serving in these positions will receive remuneration; that has never been in question,” he wrote.

In response to the claim that the “GSAS has ‘terminated’ the officer positions and therefore ‘destroyed’ the GSC,” the fact sheet said. “It was never the intention of GSAS to ‘destroy’ the GSC but rather to ensure that collected funds are being directed to as many students as possible and to offer more robust support to the entire student body. The intention was: 1) to preserve more of the GSC budget for all students, rather than just two individuals; 2) to increase the total amount of money available to the student body; 3) to distribute funds more equitably; and 4) to enable those students who might not apply for research- and conference-related grants to access GSC financial resources for activities and opportunities that interest them.”

The university statement from Bell further said that an agreement has yet to be reached, but that the university and graduate student union are continuing the conversation: “The University is engaged in discussions with the union about how to structure the positions so that they would actually constitute ‘work.’ These discussions are ongoing.”