Monica Sanchez Rivas was named the 2006-2007 Graduate Students
Association president Tuesday night, beating her opponent, Anthony
Dunbar, by 37.4 percent.
The other three positions on the ballot were uncontested. Two
candidates were re-elected to their current positions, Vice
President of Internal Affairs Mac Marston and Vice President of
External Affairs Cindy Mosqueda. Janet Cummings was elected vice
president of academic affairs.
All four winning candidates are members of the Students Taking
Action and Re-energizing GSA slate.
Sanchez, the current GSA director of community service, was not
present at the board meeting. Among the issues on her platform are
providing resources and support for graduate students who are
married or have children, supporting programs that promote
diversity, and stressing graduate student community
involvement.
The referendum that would have funded a Graduate Writing Center
failed to pass, as student fee referendums require 20 percent voter
turnout. Only 15.93 percent of graduate and professional students
cast ballots.
Prior to tabulating the election results, the board discussed
and eventually rejected several complaints that had been brought
against Dunbar, a doctoral student in information studies and the
GSA director of communication.
One of the complaints called for his disqualification from the
ballot.
In a complaint filed by current GSA President Jared Fox, Dunbar
was accused of using an e-mail list obtained from GSA office staff
member Lynikka Bernard to e-mail his personal election platform to
various graduate students on campus.
In the complaint, Fox stated that according to the election
code, candidates are prohibited to use GSA, Associated Students
UCLA or university equipment in the campaign process, including
telephones, computer networks and servers.
Election code says candidates may use this information but only
with permission from the Elections Board.
Another complaint was filed by Nurit Katz, director of
GSA’s Sustainable Resource Center. Katz said students had
complained that the listserv was not intended for personal campaign
use from candidates.
The complaints were ultimately rejected based on the grounds
that because the list was granted to Dunbar without question from
GSA staff, he was under the impression that it was rightfully
obtained.
Dunbar said he had no intent to “sway, manipulate or
circumvent. I’ve never been a sneaky person.”
“I asked her for it and she supplied it,” he
said.
The accusations were not taken lightly by the Elections
Board.
“Disqualification for candidacy is pretty major,”
said Jackie Provost, a public health graduate student on the
Elections Board. She said she felt there was not sufficient
information to disqualify him. The board agreed with
Provost’s motion to reject the allegations.
Two complaints were also filed stating that Dunbar had solicited
endorsement from both the GSA representative for the engineering
council and the International Graduate Student Association.
Dunbar publicly stated throughout his campaign that he would not
seek endorsements, and the only restriction the election code
places on candidates is that they cannot lie or transmit false
information during their campaign.
Dunbar said he did not seek any endorsements from
candidates.
Election results will be certified at the next meeting of the
GSA Forum, the governing assembly of the GSA, on May 10.