Nurit Katz became the 2007-2008 Graduate Students Association president on Tuesday night, beating her opponent, Tony Dunbar, by 47 percent.
The other three positions on the ballot were uncontested: Janet Cummings Link was reelected vice president of academic affairs, Arpi Siyahian was elected vice president of internal affairs, and Monica Sanchez, outgoing GSA president, was elected vice president of external affairs.
Dunbar, who had 25.2 percent of the vote and also lost in the GSA presidential race last year, was not available for comment after the meeting.
All four winning candidates are members of the GSA Experience slate.
Sanchez said all of the candidates are also current cabinet members, and winning the election will allow her and her colleagues to pursue the efforts they began this year.
“I’m glad projects that we started will continue to generate momentum,” she said.
Cummings Link said the officers are looking forward to collaborating to meet group and individual goals, such as her work on maximizing graduate student input in academic program reviews.
“We will all continue to lobby for an increase in resources for the Graduate Student Resource Center and the (Graduate) Writing Center,” she said.
Out of 10,709 eligible voters, 997 total ballots were cast, a voter turnout of 10.7 percent.
Sanchez said there were multiple factors that may have affected the voter turnout, pointing to the absence of referenda on the ballot and thus less interest from graduate students.
Last year, there was a referendum on the GSA ballot to fund the Graduate Writing Center and the voter turnout was 15.93 percent.
This year, the placement of the online ballot on the MyUCLA Web site made it hard to notice, Sanchez added.
“There were logistical technical difficulties,” she said.
Katz, who won with 72.3 percent of the vote, said she hopes to increase voter turnout in next year’s election.
She said she has multiple goals for her term, including expanding elections to involve more graduate students.
“I hope to get people excited and get two full slates (running),” she said.
A graduate student pursuing a joint master’s degree in public policy and business administration, Katz said she will be the first public policy graduate student to be GSA president and the first business administration student told the position since the 1950s.
She said the elections were civil and there was a collaborative atmosphere among candidates, with no complaints or issues.
Though she said the voter turnout was good, she hopes more students will get involved on a “higher level” through volunteering and taking leadership positions.
As her first action as president, Katz said she plans to conduct a “comprehensive survey” via e-mail to ask graduate students about the events they liked and what they would like to see from GSA.
The officers said part of their focus is to promote GSA’s role in the UCLA community.
“Graduate students use our services but don’t know that we are hosting or funding them,” Sanchez said.
She said GSA is holding a logo contest and working on new ways to market GSA, calling it a “branding issue.”
During the Elections Board meeting, Sanchez said the board also discussed whether the candidates or board is responsible for endorsements. They made recommendations that will be forwarded to the GSA Forum, the governing assembly of the GSA, to consider.
The board also wanted to broaden the eligibility for qualified endorsers to officers of student interest groups and exclude candidates currently running for office, citing a conflict of interest.
Election results will be certified at the next meeting of the GSA Forum on May 9.