The Graduate Student Council (GSC) unanimously passed a resolution supporting the approximately 5,000 Stanford nurses who are on strike during its Wednesday meeting.
The Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (CRONA), which represents Stanford nurses, began its strike against Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital on Monday. In addition to expressing solidarity with the nurses, the resolution calls on the hospitals to support health care workers “who have borne the brunt of the pandemic” and restore nursing health care benefits, which will be withdrawn starting May 1.
Councilors also unanimously confirmed fourth-year applied physics Ph.D. student Viktor Krapivin and Kimberly Gonzalez-Zelaya ’25 to the Board of Judicial Affairs (BJA), a 15-person committee that oversees judicial affairs such as “adopting or modifying bylaws specifying policies and procedures,” according to the Office of Community Affairs website.
Mental health was another theme of the meeting, with the council unanimously passing a resolution that would require faculty and instructors to undergo mental health training and dedicate class time and syllabus space to sharing mental health resources with students. Councilors are also set to vote in the future on a resolution that would mandate instructors to provide days off for students to care for their mental wellbeing.
GSC councilor Jamie Fine, a fifth-year modern thought and literature Ph.D. student, affirmed the need for addressing mental health but questioned the feasibility of the latter resolution advocating for mental health days.
“I’m not saying that Stanford doesn’t need to do a whole lot more in terms of changing how mental health is being addressed,” Fine said. “I’m just wondering if it would be possible to ask the people who wrote this bill to come to a meeting and explain their rationale behind it.”
Councilors also continued their conversation from two weeks ago with representatives from Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) about missing flatmail and packages. According to Executive Director of R&DE Student Housing Operations Imogen Hinds, UG2, which provides mail and package services for the University, has reported an increase in the amount of mail it has received in recent weeks. However, this amount is still short of UG2’s daily average, Hinds said.
GSC councilor Jason Anderson, a third-year aeronautics and astronautics Ph.D. student, asked R&DE representatives to disclose updates about the missing mail and packages with students on a more frequent basis, even if they do not know the full details of the situation at the time.
“This is just so that people don’t go out of their way to investigate [the missing mail and packages] themselves, spreading confusion about what’s going on,” Anderson said.