GSG holds first popular elections

After an extensive petitioning campaign, the Graduate Student Government kicked off its first student-wide popular election yesterday.

Though gaining approval from the GSG for a popular election has been a long process, a handful of concerned students are finally seeing their goal realized.

Prior to this year, GSG officers were selected by an assembly consisting of representatives from each academic department, said former GSG assembly member Jason Brownlee.

"This kind of system is not truly representative because students serving as representatives have been able to serve without any regular accountability in the form of a school-wide election," Brownlee said.

Last August, Brownlee — with the help of current GSG Chair Lauren Hale and other GSG members — obtained about 200 signatures on a petition for student body-wide GSG elections.

The GSG assembly adopted the petition into its bylaws, with the stipulation that at least 10 percent of the graduate student body must vote in order for the new system to be implemented permanently, Hale said.

Matt Fouse, running unopposed for GSG Chair, commented on the importance of a high level of participation in the election. "The big thing in my mind is to get the required number of people to vote so we can continue this, even if someone gets 200 write-ins," Fouse said.

Brownlee also stressed the importance of voter turnout. "It's really important that the graduate students turn out to vote because we have to exceed this threshold of 10 percent," Brownlee said.

"It's hard because this is the first election and many of the graduate students come from countries that have never experienced democracy before," he added.

Voting began yesterday at 5 p.m. and will continue through Tuesday at 5 p.m., entirely through secure online balloting, Brownlee said.

Election Committee Chair Karthick Ramakrishnan said the most prominent issues the new officers will face are post-enrollment status and the shortage of graduate housing.

"Post-enrollment is the status assigned to students once their funding from the school runs out and they lose all their benefits like health care and access to the gym, and they begin having to pay back their loans," Ramakrishnan said.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"One difference between the GSG and the Undergraduate Student Government is that our issues seriously affect people's pocketbooks," he said. "The stakes are very high."

Brownlee also noted that the new officers will be in charge of a large GSG budget.

"We have a $9,000 budget, since all the graduate students pay dues," he said. "We need to find a way to responsibly spend that in order to best serve the graduate student constituency."

Brownlee said that graduate students involved in student government can follow the example set by members of the USG.

"We're teaching the undergraduates about politics in our precepts, yet they're teaching us about democratic elections in student government," Brownlee said.

"I think that having elections will strengthen the legitimacy of the GSG as an organization representative of a diverse group of students," he added.

Fouse said the new election process has already had positive effects on the graduate student population.

"I'm excited about the new process," he said. "It's already gotten more people involved than the previous method, and I think next year will work even better."