second-class citizens
2006-12-07 | 12:32 a.m.

Tonight at council, Pascale (a PhD rep from our department) told me she thought she saw smoke coming out of my ears.

When was this? It was during a presentation by the Interim Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies on graduate funding. The entire presentation was about research students. Non-thesis Masters students were specifically excluded from the discussion right at the beginning. Later, he was forced to acknowledge that some non-thesis Masters students do do research, and yes, they're valuable too.

But what about me, and the people I represent on council?

Nope, we don't count.

Why? Because McGill is a research-intensive institution. It's the student researchers who improve the profile of the school. Professional students get more from the school than the school gets from them, therefore funding us isn't a priority.

It actually does make sense, in a way. But that doesn't mean it didn't smart to hear it put so bluntly.

The fact is, sometimes I feel like, as far as university administration is concerned, we don't exist. Hell, as far as PGSS is concerned, we don't exist. During a later discussion of the Funding and Tuition Committee's report, I brought up the fact that, while the university has a valid reason for not making people like me a priority, I would hope that the PGSS would want to do something for us. Us being all of those fee-paying members of the PGSS who are in coursework-intensive programs that don't allow us time to hold down real jobs (5 hours a week as an RA is almost killing me), and who are not only not required to do research, but actively discouraged from it.

A certain member of the exec asked me, after my comment, what department I was from. "Speech Language Pathology" I said. "You don't do research in Speech Language Pathology?" she asked. At which point I had to explain that at the Masters level, it's an intensive clinical training program.

This is the same woman with whom I had a very long discussion of the fact that no one ever remembers that non-research grad students exist, just a couple of months ago. She was the one who told me that there was a push on to get us recognized. I was a little bit pissed off that she had, in fact, forgotten that we exist.

Maybe I wouldn't be so over-sensitive about it if not for the fact that I have been told, to my face, that I am not a real grad student because I'm in a professional, and not a research, program.

I need a plan to get us acknowledged. I just can't think of what one is. And I can't do anything now. I have to get back to studying.

Stupid exams.

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