Graduate students elect new officers

When the Web-based polls closed yesterday at 5 p.m., the Graduate Student Government had a new group of leaders for the 2001-02 session. Tomorrow evening, Matt Fouse will be installed as GSG chair to replace former chair Lauren Hale, who will now serve as press secretary.

Other newly elected officers include parliamentary secretary Matthew Hindman, corresponding secretary Adrian Banner, recording secretary Michi Taga, Ori Heffetz as treasurer and Yesim Tozan as social chair.

What makes this year's crop of GSG officers notable is the process by which they were selected. For the first time in the GSG's history, candidates were chosen in a popular vote by their peers.

"Students have embraced the increase in democratic participation," said election committee chair Karthick Ramakrishnan. "Instead of 20 or so people deciding who the GSG officers will be, we've had more than 300 voters."

Fouse was enthusiastic about the switch.

"My hope was that the new election process would give graduate students a direct say in choosing their executive board representatives and help to keep the GSG in touch with the needs of graduate students," he said. "I believe that this year's elections were very successful in achieving this goal."

The relatively high voter turnout came as a relief to some. The GSG assembly had accepted the plan for a popular election with a mandate requiring that at least 10 percent of the graduate student body vote to make the election legitimate.

"We had initially been worried about getting the requisite (voter) turnout for each individual office," explained Ramakrishnan. "Many of the seats that were initially opposed became unopposed the weekend prior to the election when the incumbents started dropping out."

Afraid that a massive campaign might be needed to "get out the vote," Ramakrishnan said committee members were pleased that such an effort wasn't necessary.

In fact, Ramakrishnan reported that results showed voter turnout to be nearly twice the requisite 10 percent threshold in nearly all the races.

Current representatives expect that securing benefits for graduate students with post enrollment status will be one of the crucial issues the new GSG leaders will face.

Said Fouse, "I think we have a great deal of work ahead of us, but that the potential for helping hundreds of individual graduate students through reforms in post-enrollment status or increased access to affordable housing are worth the effort."