This year’s Graduate Students Association elections, which will run from today through next Tuesday, are a fantastic opportunity to turn the tide of the last three years’ declining election turnouts.
With a much smaller advertising budget than ASUCLA’s undergraduate student council, GSA has done a good job in the uphill battle of getting the word out about candidates and election participation.
Nevertheless, since 2005 there has been a decline in both voter participation and competition among candidates within the GSA.
According to Daily Bruin archives, voter turnout for 2006 represented only 20 percent of graduate students, a proportion that was slashed in half in 2007 with a dismal 10 percent involvement.
Last year, candidates for three out of the four electable positions ran unopposed, which may have led many students to believe their votes wouldn’t matter.
By contrast, this year’s lineup features only one unopposed candidate and a majority of candidates who have never held office before within GSA. These are strong new incentives for graduate student voters to get involved.
Graduate students must vote and voice their concerns as only the first step toward further student involvement; there are many more compelling reasons for graduate students to support and interact with the GSA beyond the polls after the end of the election season.
The GSA already assists in lobbying efforts in Sacramento aimed at lowering fees and increasing funding for the recruitment and retention of great graduate students. It also provides opportunities for graduate students to get together both socially and professionally, fostering future professional relationships and the potential for new interdepartmental research opportunities.
Improving the effectiveness of the GSA through increased engagement would provide significant benefits for both current and future students.
In the current academic environment, private schools are increasingly able to offer full rides and competitive packages to a wider range of students at even the undergraduate level while California public universities battle fee increases and budget cuts just to stay at the same level of funding.
Staying competitive means that UCLA must offer graduate students something more than monetary incentives to continue recruiting the strongest candidates.
This year’s GSA candidates are all devoted to increasing communal feelings and improving networking opportunities for graduate students.
Successful implementation of these goals could be the first step in a positive, self-perpetuating cycle where increased involvement of current graduates attracts a greater number of competitive candidates to UCLA, who in turn attract a greater number of highly skilled faculty, who then attract better funding and even more top-tier graduate students.
Even students preparing to graduate this spring would eventually benefit from this increasing competitive edge, because the quality of current graduate students reflects well on the overall quality of the institution that granted their degree.
Despite the common community-oriented goals all candidates endorse, however, most have very different strategies for bringing out the best in UCLA’s graduate student community.
And that alone is perhaps the most compelling reason to read up, decide which candidates to support and be sure to vote in the week ahead.