Thank you, Abigail Labella, GPSC President: A letter in response

Let me be clear from the outset that I speak solely on behalf of myself and that I am not an objective party in this matter nor will I pretend to be. This is my third year at Duke, second year as a member of the GPSC Executive Committee and second year working alongside Abbe Labella. Beginning as a representative in the General Assembly during the spring semester of my first year, GPSC gave me an opportunity to interact with students outside of my program and to be directly involved with issues concerning the entire student body. By the end of the semester, I had been convinced to run for the Director of Student Life position. I could probably go on for days about how much GPSC has meant to me, how it changed my graduate school experience, how it offered me a way out of the loneliness and imposter syndrome symptoms that so often accompany the first year of graduate or professional school. The bottom line is that Ms. Labella has played a critical role in my dedication to GPSC and in my strong belief in this organization’s abilities.

Over the nineteen months I have worked with Ms. Labella, I have watched her grow as a leader among Duke’s graduate and professional students. Not only has she remained a solid source of support and enthusiasm on the Executive Committee, but her willingness to tackle new problems and to go above and beyond her call of duty to help those around her is unparalleled. Speaking from my own personal experience, I would never have been able to accomplish my role on GPSC, managing the many social programs offered over the course of the year, without her assistance and suggestions. Moreover, she has been an asset in setting up communication between me and the appropriate members of the Duke administration and community. Ms. Labella has always been a reliable source of encouragement and guidance when I have needed it most, and I think I can safely say that I am far from the only individual at this University who feels as such. I re-ran for the same position on the Executive Committee last spring, confident that Ms. Labella would bring the skills and leadership she had demonstrated over the previous year as Vice-President to her new role as President. I have yet to be proven wrong.

None of this is to say that GPSC is perfect or that we do not have a long way to go in tackling some of the graduate and professional students’ most pressing concerns. But that is the nature of any student organization and any government. There is never a given point in time when all that needs to be resolved is resolved or when everyone is satisfied with the way that organization or government is run. In my opinion, one of Ms. Labella’s most remarkable qualities is her ability to absorb criticism and feedback and to use them in a productive manner to reshape how she handles her position, to draw attention to concerns voiced by students and to promote GPSC’s role in dealing with those concerns.

This year, Ms. Labella has worked tirelessly to promote a graduate and professional student-wide adoption of a training program in diversity and inclusion. The members of the Graduate and Professional Students for Truth and Transparency (a group whose existence I discovered upon the publication of the letter) seem to have a very different interpretation than I do of Ms. Labella’s representations at General Assembly and Executive Committee meetings regarding the institution of such training. I have been present at all but one meeting this semester.

I never once understood Ms. Labella to be stating or insinuating that President Brodhead had told her “‘that [he] was uninterested in developing a training program for incoming graduate and professional students.’” I imagine that such an absolutist statement by Ms. Labella that President Brodhead did not care about diversity training would have been met with shock and concern long before the publication of yesterday’s letter. All I surmised from her remarks over the course of the semester was that President Brodhead and other members of the Duke administration had expressed their doubts as to the feasibility of mandatory and identical training across all nine schools. I was never under the impression that “President Brodhead does not support developing or implementing training in diversity and inclusion.” Furthermore, GPSC and the Black Graduate and Professional Student Association recently met to discuss how we could go about promoting such a program in an effective way given the administration’s feedback.

What I find most upsetting about the article published yesterday is the refusal of the Graduate and Professional Students for Truth and Transparency to raise these specific concerns at a General Assembly meeting, which seems to me to be a far more appropriate forum to foster discussion and to clarify what appears to be vastly different interpretations of the same words. Despite the group’s name, it has apparently existed in secret, unbeknownst to the majority of graduate and professional students, and I do not see anything truthful or transparent in the way they handled the situation. It is disconcerting that the views of some of the groups mentioned were not actually articulated, and that the “other student governments and graduate student organizations” on whose behalf they wrote are not mentioned by name. Most of all, it depresses me that the authors chose to deal with the matter in such a public, shaming way rather than to utilize the channels of productive communication and dialogue they seem to value so highly.

I for one cannot imagine a stronger leader to continue at the head of GPSC this year than Abbe Labella, and I believe that she has proven herself more than capable. Ms. Labella, please know that you have my full support, respect and gratitude in the unwavering dedication you have shown and continue to show Duke’s graduate and professional students and to the Duke Graduate and Professional Student Council.

Rachel Rothendler