The Graduate and Professional Students' Assembly's (GAPSA) budget comes from Penn graduate students' fees. In total, this figure is $1.5 million annually.

However, there have been recent concerns that an unacceptable percentage of this budget is being used towards funding internal events (e.g. board bonding retreats in Atlantic City, bi-weekly open-bar GAPSA socials without limit), instead of being allocated for events organized by individual schools and student-groups. The exact number remains to be divulged as GAPSA has not agreed to disclose it. Of the $1.5 million, GAPSA determines how to spend more than 50%. 

This practice has become serious and offensive enough that the executive leadership of all 12 graduate programs at the University of Pennsylvania are motivated to intervene. 

Our goals are 1) To demand increased financial transparency and 2) to design a more student-input-driven process for determining how the student life fee is spent. The document outlining all of the inquiries can be found here.

We would like to request this information from:
Gaurav Shukla, President of GAPSA
Paul Welfer, Chair for Finance of GAPSA

Their finances are overseen by:
Katie Hanlon Bonner, Director of the Office of Student Affairs
Dr. Hikaru Kozuma, Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs

Please sign this petition support this inquiry and ensure that all student fees are appropriately used to benefit student life on campus.