This October, I was sitting with one of my colleagues who had gone to the Graduate Student Union (GSU) semi-annual general meeting. She told me that the GSU is approximately $2.9 million in debt, a huge part of which is debt to GreenShield, our health insurance provider. This means that our health coverage is at risk.
I started to cry.
I’m worried I won’t be able to afford the medications I need. I worry even more about international students and graduate students with families who rely on our healthcare coverage. A lot of us have heard whispers about past GSU executives’ and board members’ financial misdeeds but had thought of them in the abstract. We now know that GreenShield has already threatened the GSU with revoking our health and dental insurance. The reality and consequences we now face are sinking in.
We don’t have all the facts, and we don’t know the whole picture. What we do know is that past GSU executives and employees have rendered the GSU dysfunctional. The GSU has committed both gross financial negligence and embezzlement that has been ongoing for years. The GSU is unable to function in the ways that we as graduate students, and this campus as an ecosystem, desperately need.
The GSU shared a financial update at the semi-annual general meeting in October 2025. This update put the GSU’s debt at nearly $2.9 million. A significant portion of the reported debt was to GreenShield.
We do not currently know how much debt has been paid off and how much remains outstanding; not knowing and a lack of transparency is part of the problem. Are the fees we graduate students pay each semester now going to service this debt rather than pay for our health and dental insurance?
The GSU leadership has failed to report financial irregularities and potential illegal activity externally. We do not believe that this – at best – financial mismanagement, and – at worst – financial crimes can be resolved internally through committees and reviews.
We appreciate that many of the execs have been working to resolve these issues, but the scale of the response needs to meet the scale of the problem.
Last year, the GSU held a workshop to reimagine its future. However, this took place before we knew about the extent of the debt we owe. We’ve attempted reforming.
We are still left with approximately $800 of debt per graduate student (again, we don’t know the exact amount, and this is part of the problem).
This is why we must dissolve the GSU. We can’t stay on this path anymore and we don’t have to. Another future is possible. We need only look to GSU’s roots to know what our future could look like.
The GSU is a historic union structure, one which has done an incredible amount of good across decades: organizing to provide graduate students with housing downtown, providing safer spaces and real advocacy for queer safety and community, and serving as a voice for the students of this province as we face the theft of our right to a comprehensive education.
We want a functioning union that we can wholeheartedly recommend our peers participate in.
We want a workplace where people, including the current executives, can build on the organization’s historic strengths, not one where they must join the ranks of people that unfairly bear the weight of longstanding theft.
So where do we go from here?
We don’t have all the answers but here are three steps we can collectively take:
First, we dissolve the GSU. It has failed to fulfill its purpose. But we don’t have to start from scratch.
Second, we discuss with Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Student Union (MUNSU) if and how they can temporarily host us graduate students in their union. We would pay our fees to MUNSU who would administer our health and dental insurance. Our next step might rest with them.
Third, while hosted by MUNSU we use that transitional period to create a new graduate governing body who will be accountable to graduate students, represent our interests, deliver vital services to us, and advocate for graduate students’ rights and well-being.
To the current executive team: we invite you to be a part of this reformation.
Dissolve the GSU. Seek justice. Re-form, together.
Signed in hope & solidarity on behalf of the Geography Graduate Student Association (GGSA),
Graydon Gillies, Sam Morton, Lana Vuleta, Jordinn Nelson Long, Domenique Ciavattone
Editors note: GSU says it’s debt is currently at around $2 million with approximately $1.6 million owed to Greenshield and $355,260.02 owed to CFS and CFS-NL.
