Graduate students can cast their votes for next year’s student government beginning today. Students can access their ballots on their MyUCLA web pages until noon on May 2.
There are four positions, but the office of the vice president of academic affairs is the only contested race.
Nicole Robinson, a graduate student in Italian, is an independent candidate running against Doris Melkonian, an education graduate student who is a part of the Quality and Commitment slate.
The three candidates running unopposed for the other offices are also running with the slate. A slate is a group of people who pool their resources and run together, like a political party.
The main issue of the contested race is the merger of the language departments. Tim Stowell, dean of humanities, announced in February that to save money, discussions were under way to consolidate UCLA’s six language departments into one.
Robinson said her experience within the humanities department qualifies her for the position.
This year, she is serving as the humanities division’s representative to the GSA Forum, a body of delegates from 13 graduate areas of study.
Within the department, she is on a subcommittee opposing the merger.
“There has been no clear communication … as to what the merger would actually look like,” she said.
Part of Robinson’s platform is to organize a meeting with Stowell to find out more details about the proposal.
She said she wants to know exactly how the merger will save money and ways graduate students can have some impact on the final decision.
Melkonian said her main focus would be on preserving teaching assistant jobs if the merger were to happen.
She is concerned that increasing the size of the classes would cut jobs, make hands-on teaching much more difficult, and create too much work for the TAs.
“If the class sizes are huge … the students don’t get the same interaction and the assistants won’t be able to teach effectively,” she said.
Melkonian said her experience on the Academic Senate and as co-chair of her department’s council have helped her form relationships with administrators that will be helpful as the vice president of academic affairs.
She is also running on the same slate as her sister, Arda Melkonian, who is the sole candidate for internal vice president.
“We understand each other’s schedule, work habits, and so on, so it’s a tremendous benefit … to have (us) collaborating and working seamlessly together,” Doris Melkonian said.
The votes will be tallied on May 3 and the 2011-2012 GSA government will approved by the current GSA Forum on May 4.