Candidates push for high turnouts

Graduate Students Association elections will close next Monday,
and candidates are working to utilize the remaining time to
encourage their fellow students to vote.

While the president is the only contested position on the
ballot, candidates are stressing that it is important for graduate
and professional students to vote in the election, particularly
with a referendum on the ballot that would amend the constitution
to charge students $4 a quarter to fund a Graduate Writing
Center.

In order for a referendum to pass, it must receive 50 percent of
the vote plus one, and at least 10 percent of the graduate student
body must vote, according to the GSA Elections Code.

Though four of the five candidates on the ballot are running
unopposed, candidates said it is still important to have a
significant number of students votes.

“When you’re elected by 10 or 15 percent,
that’s not really a representation of the student
body,” said Mac Marston, the incumbent vice president of
internal affairs, who is running unopposed. “When you have 30
or 40 percent, that’s a much more representative sample of
the graduate student population.”

Candidates also stressed the importance of voting for president,
since the position holds a good deal of power over the student
body.

The two candidates running for president are Anthony Dunbar,
current GSA director of communication, who is running as an
independent; and Monica Sanchez Rivas, current director of
community service, who is running on the Students Taking Action and
Re-energizing GSA slate.

A slate is the student government equivalent of a political
party, where candidates with similar ideologies campaign together,
often pooling resources.

Dunbar said he has been doing most of his organizing at home,
and has been networking with people to try to get the word out to
vote.

“It’s a little bit of a challenge, considering
I’m running against a slate,” Dunbar said.

Sanchez said she has been attending the meetings of different
academic councils to campaign and hype up the referendum.

She has also been informing different councils about how the
writing center will meet the diverse needs of the many graduate
programs on campus.

Voting for GSA is going on now via MyUCLA. Graduate and
professional students have until Monday at noon to cast their
ballots.

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