2025-2028 Bargaining Blog: Session 5

Hi everyone! Xanthippe here, FSU-GAU’s bargaining chair. Today, we had session five with the FSU-BOT team where we issued our proposal for article fourteen on GAU rights, and our counter proposal for article eighteen, other employee rights. The FSU-BOT team issued their counter proposal for article five, academic freedom and article fourteen. Let’s break some of this down.

In our counter proposal for article eighteen, we proposed locks on all graduate assistant spaces. We chose to add this language because of the issues that were made apparent during the shooting that took place on FSU’s campus on April 17, 2025. The BOT team did not issue a counter proposal as of yet, but in our revisions we plan to add language on defining what a graduate assistant space is. 

In our proposal for article fourteen on GAU rights, we proposed added language to reserve us a space at international graduate assistant orientation to introduce and inform international GAs of their rights and their union. We also proposed adding the language to secure us a space at the Graduate Student Resource Fair. BOT struck this addition due to a conversation Dr. Riley had with the director of the fair, where they said that they cannot allow us a table because then they would need to allow a table for all other student organizations. The issue with this, is that GAU is not a registered student organization (RSO) so we do not see how that push back is relevant in our case. We also added language to ensure that communications about announcements that are communicating things achieved in bargaining credit those things to the bargaining process, and that they do so conspicuously within the announcement with font, boldness, and size matching that of the rest of the announcement. The BOT team struck the aesthetics language, as they claimed they do not always have control over things such as that because they send it to the communications department. We will be conducting further research and will be issuing a counter proposal at a later date. 

As far as their counter proposal for article five on Academic Freedom, they mostly chose to mirror the language in the UFF-FSU collective bargaining agreement. However, they did choose to strike our suggestion of “The graduate assistant may freely engage in scholarly and creative activities and publish the results, as detailed in article 5.2(a).” They also chose to strike language on the responsibility of the administration in cases of free speech. Similar to article fourteen, we will be conducting further research and issuing a counter at a later date. 

We did not reach a tentative agreement on any articles in this session. However, Rebecca Petersen, the BOT chief negotiator, did ask us for a list of articles we still plan to open and ones we plan to keep status quo, which we will provide in our next session. Session six will be on a Monday, July 7th, from 10-12pm. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions, and we hope to see you all at the next session!

With Love & In Solidarity, 

Xanthippe Pack-Brown

FSU-GAU Bargaining Chair