2017 GSA candidate evaluation: Parshan Khosravi

The graduate student government is holding an election for its executive cabinet Tuesday. The Daily Bruin editorial board interviewed each of the cabinet’s four unopposed candidates and evaluated their platforms for the coming year.

Parshan Khosravi’s platforms and personality will add much-needed energy to next year’s vice president of external affairs’ office. And if he organizes his efforts well, he stands to be an important voice for graduate students’ needs.

Over the past few years, graduate students’ needs have grown while advocacy efforts at the state and federal level haven’t. Between student labor issues, rising graduate student tuition and instances of sexual assault and harassment, the vice president of external affairs has been called on to do more and more – though previous vice presidents have historically offered less.

But Khosravi can meet these demands. The master of public policy student has extensive advocacy experience as the former president of UC Irvine’s undergraduate student government and treasurer of the University of California Student Association.

His platforms tell the same story. Khosravi plans to divide the external affairs’ office into a lobbying unit, which will focus on external advocacy efforts, and an organizational unit, which will focus on campus-wide advocacy efforts. This is a welcome change that should bring more efficiency and effectiveness to his office. And his push for more student laborer resources and protection for the university’s minority groups are in tune with many graduate students’ needs and concerns.

That said, Khosravi’s office might be overcommitting itself. Khosravi identified nine issues he wants to address during his term, ranging from more teaching assistant support to better union representation. While he defended this broad focus by pointing to how the issues would fall within the newly formed units of his office, the realities and limitations of the vice president’s workload could curtail some of his more ambitious plans.

This board urges Khosravi to focus his efforts on the most pressing issues faced by the graduate student body, and consolidating his efforts on a handful of issues will allow him to most effectively leverage the strengths of a restructured office. That focus will help him to fine-tune some of his platforms’ details, such as identifying how the graduate student government will fund its partnership with UCSA.

Ultimately, Khosravi is poised to be a powerful force within the GSA, and with a more focused approach to key issues, his office can do wonders for graduate students.

Visit this page to read the board’s full evaluations of all four GSA candidates.