Several people have asked us how we come up with our position statements. We thought it would be helpful to explain the process here for those who are curious. Our goal with respect to these position statements is to address concerns and issues that affect a broad spectrum of graduate students across the college. We do this by gathering information about the issue, developing a consensus as to EGSA's position on the issue, and then making faculty and administration aware of the issue. Within these statements we also provide suggestions as to how the issue might best be addressed.

It should be noted that these statements have no binding power or authority. They are merely suggestions made from the graduate students to administration about issues that are important to us and upon which we feel we've reached a representative consensus.

Our informal procedure for generating these position statements is currently as follows:

1. At most EGSA meetings we spend a few minutes brainstorming topics for position statements. Often these topics are suggested by individual graduate students to EGSA members. At any given time, there are as many as half a dozen issues we're discussing that might turn into position statements.

2. When we are preparing to issue a statement we choose among the topics at hand and proceed to investigate the issue in a bit more depth.

3. We flesh out the idea within the active members of EGSA and the subscribers to egsamembers-l. Often an email discussion will iterate for awhile as we decide how to approach the issue.

4. Our larger mailing list, egsa-l, consists of approximately 175 graduate students in the college. We poll that list for their feedback on the issue. Anyone who is interested in discussing the issue further is welcome to subscribe to egsamembers-l where the bulk of the discussion will take place.

5. After gathering feedback and ascertaining how the issue is dealt with in the various departments across the college, we construct the first draft of the position statement.

6. This draft is discussed and rewritten several times during the course of a discussion on egsamembers-l.

7. Once we have a polished statement ready that we feel incorporates the input we received from graduate students and reflects a consensus among EGSA members and those who participated in the discussion, we issue the statement to the Associate Dean for Professional Development, the Directors of Graduate Study in the college and other parties as appropriate.

8. We now wait for responses and feedback from graduate students about whether their department has responded in any way to the suggestions that were made.