Student Health Insurance Manager Anna Kenyon discussed changes to graduate student healthcare policy following the Affordable Care Act at the Graduate and Professional Student Council meeting Tuesday night.
Open enrollment begins Friday for the University’s insurance plan, which is now ACA-compliant. But Kenyon warned that obtaining a plan from the ACA marketplace would not guarantee a waiver from Duke’s student health insurance plan.
“If you’re looking for an alternative plan, [even though] there are a lot of plans that are out there in that marketplace website, or a lot of companies that are offering cheap plans, just remember that we still need to meet the waiver criteria,” Kenyon said.
In addition, GPSC president Amol Yadav, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering, discussed the use of graduate and professional student activity fees. He noted that Duke allots a certain amount of this funding to programming at the primarily undergraduate-run Duke University Union. But, at the National Conference for the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, he found that many other graduate and professional schools do not give any of their activities fees to undergraduate organizations.
Following this statement, some GPSC members questioned the need to give graduate and professional funds to DUU.
In other business:
Patrick Killela, co-chair of GPSC’s basketball committee, said the number of family games offered this year will increase from two to six. The number has been increased in hopes of garnering higher attendance from graduate student families.
Student life co-chairs Tiffany Wilson and Ben Shellhorn discussed the results of a recent student life survey. The survey attempted to determine whether graduate and professional students were taking advantage of events put on by GPSC and whether they were satisfied with them.
Shellhorn said many of the events had relatively low attendance.
“We found that one of the top reasons is that generally, graduate students are busy,” Shellhorn said.
Many graduate and professional students requested on the survey that GPSC hold events they were already hosting.
“We’re happy to hear that people are requesting events that we already do,” Shellhorn said.
Yadav announced that Shanna Lehrman, GPSC University affairs coordinator and second-year law student, was elected as Chair of Legal Concerns of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students.
“One of the biggest concerns from members of Congress from the last [legislative action days] is that graduate and professional students are not as vocal as their undergraduate counterparts,” Lehrman said. "It is really important is that we construct a uniform national and state-specific legislative platform regarding our particular concerns as graduate and professional students."
Correction: In the original version of this article, Shanna Lehrman's name was misspelt and her position on GPSC was inaccurate. Additionally, Lehrman was elected to the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students. The Chronicle regrets the errors.
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