"I find that it's the tenured professors who are generally the least helpful," said Gabriella C. Gonzalez, a third-year graduate student in sociology. "Professors come here and are pretty much given carte blanche. I think we have to say that this system doesn't work."
Guidelines need to be set for advisers, Fagen said.
"Nowhere is it written down what advisers are expected to do," he said.
Some students said that a more formalized organization of graduate students might be the solution.
"Harvard [graduate] students aren't unionized but many others are. I'm not saying that's what should be done here, but there is no element of that here," Kannappan said.
Fagen said he hoped more publicity about the problem would spur the faculty and the administration to take more action.
"They're a lot of faculty out there that do care," Fagen said. "I just don't think they know the extent of the problem."