School Refuses Student Access to Ombudsperson

[ssfgrad]

Hi all! I haven't posted here in quite some time, but this site has been an excellent resource for me in terms of non-biased advice and support. I am a third year PhD student with a focus in neuroscience at a medical school. Before coming here I spent a year in an eeeeeeeeextremely toxic lab at another university. It was so bad that I quit working on my PhD and started over at my current university. After that experience, advocating for graduate student support and rights has become a huge deal to me. I am an officer in the student government association and I am working very closely with our SGA president to advocate changes that will protect students who end up in bad situations.

A little background, I am currently in a great lab with a great PI who supports me, but that doesn't seem to be the norm at this university. This university's climate seems to be 20 years behind what I have experienced at other schools. Sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior/comments toward students, screaming at students, throwing things at students, antiquated expectations of 70 hour work weeks, zero tolerance for work-life balance, and various other psychological torture tactics are all kind of common place here. Upon joining the program, senior graduate students pull the incoming students aside to give them a list of faculty "to avoid", but other than that there is no precedent for graduate student protection. Several students (and faculty members) have left the university because of the climate and there are active lawsuits. We have a graduate coordinator, but anytime anyone speaks with her about problems she seems to turn it around on the student. She says things like, "Are you certain it's not something YOU are doing that is making this person act this way?". We have a "graduate council" made up of several faculty members (some of which are on the "to avoid" list) which is supposed to serve as a last ditch mediation for students. Students aren't comfortable with speaking to a group of faculty members about these types of problems.

I did some research and realized that medical students at our university have access to an ombudsperson, a person whose job it is to be an impartial negotiator and resolve issues. An ombudsperson is just as much a resource to a university as it is to an individual, as they are impartial. I reached out to the ombudsperson and was told that she is only for the medical school. Our SGA president has spoken with her to see how much it would cost to absorb ~50 graduate students under her umbrella, she said that there would be zero cost. Our graduate coordinator and dean of graduate studies are refusing to let us have access to this resource. They really will not give us a good reason why, which is beyond concerning. We were first told that it would be too expensive. Then we were asked by the graduate coordinator, "why would you need an ombudsperson when you have me?". The SGA president is being told that she will not be put on the agenda for council meetings to speak about it. It just overall seems that they want to be able to sweep any graduate student issues under the rug.

I would love to get anyone's opinion on this matter. Is there any legal precedent? How would you handle this situation?

Thanks!