Graduate association evaluates their efforts

Thursday, May 23, 1996

Miscommunication, low voter turnout cited as obstaclesBy Ryan
Ozimek

Daily Bruin Contributor

After a year of attempting to increase the organization’s
immediacy to students, current members of the Graduate Students
Association (GSA) will leave their offices wondering just where
things went wrong.

At the beginning of their term, President John Shapley, Internal
Vice President Loc Nguyen and External Vice President Kevin Welner
hoped to increase the association’s visibility by inspiring
students to become involved with the graduate government.

Historically, graduate students have not paid much attention to
the association, according to government members.

"It’s been obvious that there’s a lot of apathy by students
(toward the association)," Nguyen said.

This year, government officials devoted much of their time to
efforts at turning this around.

However, recent voter turnout in the GSA elections show that the
association’s efforts have come up empty-handed. Over the past
three years, general elections for the graduate government failed
to attract more than 10 percent of the graduate student body.

With this low turnout, the association has not been able to pass
legislation necessary to increase student fees, which would have
supported the association’s cash-strapped programs such as Melnitz
Movies and the Environmental Coalition.

Although students did voice their opinion on both of the
referendums during this year’s general election, less than seven
percent of the student body took the time to vote ­ a fact
that stunned the association’s members.

"The election’s low turnout shows us that we need to double our
efforts next year," Nguyen said. "We’ll need to keep up the
momentum from this year’s efforts into next year, passing our
perspectives onto the new officers."

Even with the sketchy participation this year, Shapley higher
voter turnout in the future.

"Next year’s voting response should be better, because by that
time the new voting system will become clearer for students to
understand," Shapley said.

Throughout the school year, the association hoped to gain
recognition with students through proposing new legislation and
increasing communication among councils.

Two of the most prominent pieces of legislation created by the
government this year included an opinion poll referendum on
affirmative action and a referendum to increase student fees for
the association. Officials had hoped such referendums would spark
the much-needed interest of students.

"We need to find issues that all graduate students would have a
say in if we really want to increase student interaction with GSA,"
Nguyen commented earlier this school year.

Aside from new legislation, the three elected members also tried
to increase communication among graduate departments and the
association by attending department meetings and creating
activities for the councils.

"This year, we tried to take a more active stance in GSA by
having officers interact more with their constituents and
departmental councils," Nguyen said.

Other association members agreed with Nguyen.

"I went to individual, on-campus groups in order to get people
aware of who was in GSA and to tell them exactly what GSA did for
the students," Shapley said.

He added that once students knew their graduate government
representatives, he thought that it would be easier for more
students to become involved in the association and its
programs.

Along with having officers attend council meetings, the
association wanted to create activities that would have led to
better communication among the graduate departments — a problem
that has plagued the graduate schools for years. Unfortunately,
many of these activities never occurred.

One such plan was a beginning-of-the-year orientation for
graduate government members to help ease the transition into the
association. Instead, this year’s organization started off somewhat
precariously, and the effects of the slow start were felt
throughout the year, Nguyen explained.

"We’ve found that we didn’t have enough communication between
people during the summertime to help create better working
relationships," Nguyen said.

Without close communication and unity among members, the
graduate government was visibly unstable throughout the year. For
example, at forum meetings the association always struggled to meet
quorum; many times the association was unable to bring new
legislation to a vote because members would not attend
meetings.

Yet despite their efforts, the association’s members admitted
that they were apparently unable to reach the majority of graduate
students.

"Things may not have worked out so well this year, but next
year’s officers will probably modify what we did this year and turn
out better results," Nguyen said.

Current graduate association members will step down June 1 as
next year’s administration officially takes office.