Graduate students to vote on candidates, ballot referendums

Graduate students will be able to vote for next year’s graduate student government officers and on two ballot referendums beginning Tuesday at noon.

For the second year in a row, only one candidate is running for each of the four Graduate Student Association positions – president, vice president of internal affairs, vice president of external affairs and vice president of academic affairs.

The ballot also includes an advisory referendum and a fee referendum.

The advisory referendum will ask for student opinion on changes to UCLA’s leave of absence policy for graduate students. Last fall, UCLA stopped allowing students to take time off to write dissertations and cut the number of quarters a student could be on leave from six to three quarters.

The fee referendum will propose a $1.50 increase in quarterly graduate student fees to support the Graduate Writing Center, which has run a deficit in recent years and will have to diminish its services after a year without more funding. The referendum will also tie the increase in quarterly fees to inflation.

At least 10 percent of the graduate student body must vote for a fee referendum to pass. Last spring, voter turnout reached only about eight percent, resulting in the automatic failure of a $5 quarterly fee increase referendum that would have supported the writing center and other graduate student resources. The majority of students voting also opposed last year’s fee referendum, according to Daily Bruin archives.

Nicole Robinson, the current GSA vice president of academic affairs, is running for GSA president in this year’s election.

Robinson said she wants to continue conversations with administrators about UCLA’s leave of absence policy and make sure graduate students are included in decisions that affect their monetary expenses and quality of life. She added that her agenda will depend partially on the results of the ballot referendums.

The other candidates were also involved with graduate student government this year.

Hope McCoy, an education and information studies doctoral student who is running for vice president of external affairs, currently serves as the GSA director of communications. Cody Trojan, a political science doctoral student who is running for vice president of academic affairs, is a member of the Social Science Council. Nina Drucker, a law student running for vice president of internal affairs, is the executive board secretary of the UCLA School of Law’s Student Bar Association.

All the candidates are running with the Quality and Progress slate, which aims to increase GSA’s transparency, create connections for graduate students and ensure that the student body is involved in administrative decisions, said Robinson, a third-year doctoral student in Italian.

Current GSA president David Zeke, who is a member of the Quality and Progress slate, said he thinks GSA will benefit from the experience in student government the candidates already have.

Patrick Smith, vice president of financial development for the Anderson Student Association, said, however, he thinks the Quality and Progress slate is out of touch with the majority of students who do not want increased quarterly fees. He added that graduate students would benefit from a choice in their candidates and that having an uncontested slate could decrease voter turnout and harm the referendums’ chances of passing.

Trojan said he thinks most students don’t vote because they consider GSA a body that only approves policies passed down by administrators, instead of a political institution. He thinks students do not realize how GSA’s decisions can harm or improve their quality of life, he added.

“There are stakes; there are consequences,” Trojan said.

To encourage graduate students to vote, voter information tables with computers will be located on campus at the Cafe Med east courtyard on Tuesday, Kerckhoff Patio on Wednesday and the North Campus Student Center Patio on Thursday, said Daniel Goodman, GSA commissioner of elections.

Graduate students will be able to vote online using their MyUCLA accounts from Tuesday until April 15.

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