Monday, 4/21/97 Graduate students begin campaigns Key issues
include involvement, bureaucratic efficiency
By A.J. Harwin Daily Bruin Contributor Contesting for seats in a
government that is giving away plane tickets to lucky voters,
candidates in Wednesday’s Graduate Students Association (GSA)
election have officially begun their campaigns for office. All the
candidates in the election claim they will get graduate students
involved as in years past and make student government more
accessible and responsive to student needs. As a graduate student
in the urban planning department and external vice president for
the Hershey-Hilgard Student Association, candidate Andrew Jon
Westall feels he will have a greater impact on the campus than
current GSA president Chris Tymchuk and the rest of the GSA
organization. In a seven-point platform, Westall is advocating for
recycling containers on campus, securing a freeze on professional
school fees, restricting on-campus traffic, better coordination of
resources with ASUCLA, lobbying in Sacramento and organizing a
Spring Festival with crafts, ethnic musical bands and foods. Mark
Quigley, a graduate student of English and candidate for GSA
president, was not available for comment. Running for internal vice
president are graduate students Lance Menthe and David Kamper.
Menthe, a fourth-year physics and astronomy graduate student has
served as the co-president of the math and physical sciences
department and as a delegate of the council to forum. Menthe stated
that the importance of the internal vice-presidents position is to
run the nuts and bolts of the organization and get greater student
involvement with GSA. "I want to make all the information of GSA
easily available, practically, in an electronic format," Menthe
said. "And also to make an effort to contact all the departments to
make sure that they have representatives and know what funds are
allotted to them." Kamper, a graduate student of American Indian
studies, did not return calls for comment. Probably the toughest
race will be between Robert Davenport and incumbent Grace Chee for
the office of vice president of external affairs. While in office,
Chee founded the Lobby Corps to deal with state and federal
legislative and funding issues. Chee, in the second year of
completing her Ph.D. in history, is running on the Student
Activists slate for her old office to hopefully streamline GSA. "I
am running to make GSA more efficient," Chee said. "It has become
highly bureaucratic, slow, and inefficient. We have begun to make a
few changes and we would like to continue making those changes." In
her candidate statement, Chee said that she has worked to establish
ties with student associations across the country to work on
legislative issues with the National Association of Graduate and
Professional Students and the United States Student Association.
Davenport, a first-year screenwriter from the School of Film and
Television, hopes to use his position to make sure that all money
in his budget be used to improve the quality of life for the
average graduate student. In addition to trying to find a way to
block out the professional school fee, he plans to focus his
efforts on preferential parking for graduate students and on
mailings to the state government addressing graduate student issues
in the legislature. "We need parties, just like the undergrads,"
Davenport states in his platform. "Good parties. With food, drink,
and music. So we can mingle. Have a good time. Meet some
interesting people. Get laid once in a while." Also on the ballot
is a survey from the students’ association (ASUCLA) on an upcoming
increase in association fees, and a referendum item to amend the
GSA constitution. While the survey does not bind the association to
the students’ decree, ASUCLA officials hope to use the survey for
general feedback from students as association fees rise from $7.50
to $51.00 next fall. The referendum is an amendment that will
officially eliminate the Assembly from the Constitution and Codes
of the GSA. The Assembly, the main governing authority of GSA, was
intended to make general policy statements for the graduate student
government. Normally consisting of nominated representatives from
each department, the 150-member Assembly has not met in several
years. The referendum item would formally recognize the Forum’s
role as the governing authority of the GSA, and needs at least 51
percent voter approval with 10 percent of the eligible electorate
voting. UCLA Graduate Students Association