Variety of candidates in GSA election raises competition

Students running for office in next week’s graduate student government elections will see contested races for the first time in several years.

The Graduate Students Association, the representative governing body for UCLA’s graduate and professional schools, currently has two slates campaigning for positions on next year’s council. Slates are a group of students who run on similar platforms, much like a political party.

This will be the first time multiple students will run for one GSA seat since 2011, when just one position was contested. Next week, six candidates will compete for four GSA officer positions – president, vice president of internal affairs, vice president of external affairs and vice president of academic affairs.

In past years, GSA candidates were generally part of one slate, which had candidates in every GSA position. This year, a new slate called Moving Forward is running a candidate for president and vice president of external affairs.

Mike Cohn, the department head of the Student Organizations, Leadership & Engagement office, formerly called the Center for Student Programming, said GSA slates campaign differently from those involved in the Undergraduate Students Association Council elections. While USAC historically runs continuous slates with similar ideologies year to year, GSA slates generally change names and focuses each election, Cohn added.

“It is a much more low key campaign (in GSA),” Cohn said.

GSA president Nicole Robinson and vice president of external affairs Hope McCoy are running for office next year on the Diversity in Action slate. Vaheh Shirvanian, a doctoral candidate in philosophy, and Ivy Onyeador, a doctoral candidate in psychology, are also running under the Diversity in Action slate for the vice president of external affairs and vice president of academic affairs positions, respectively.

Michael Hirshman, who is also running for GSA president, formed the Moving Forward slate this year with Andres Schneider, a candidate for vice president of external affairs candidate.

Another graduate student, Cody Trojan, tried to run for office with the Moving Forward slate this spring, but he missed the deadline to turn in his application and was disqualified from running in this election cycle, said Cindy Stanphill, the GSA elections director. Trojan is the current vice president of academic affairs.

Hirshman, an MBA candidate at the Anderson School of Management, said he and Schneider decided to run together because they share similar ideas and goals about increasing the visibility of GSA to all graduate students.

“Many graduate students do not recognize who or what GSA is,” Hirshman said.

He said he thinks GSA currently has a limited recognition in the graduate student community because it has not accomplished anything that warrants attention.

Last year, about 11 percent of graduate students voted in GSA’s election.

Hirshman said he thinks GSA needs to facilitate increased professional and social interaction between UCLA’s professional schools and graduate programs to make itself more responsive and relevant to graduate students.

One of Moving Forward’s platforms is to create incentives for professors to take a more integrated role in the development of graduate students’ education, Hirshman added. He said he hopes to create a system where graduate students can evaluate their professors.

Robinson said she thinks current GSA officers have taken steps to place professional students into GSA’s cabinet, including director of communications Weiwei Wen, an MBA candidate at the Anderson School. GSA’s current vice president of internal affairs, Nina Drucker, is also a professional student at the UCLA School of Law.

Hope McCoy, the only candidate for vice president of internal affairs, said the Diversity in Action slate aims to voice the different perspectives of graduate students

McCoy said the Diversity in Action candidates hope to represent not only the academic interests of each student, but also the cultural, racial and linguistic identities of graduate students.

Robinson added that she wants to continue to reach out to graduate students in traditionally underrepresented departments in GSA – like certain science departments – and incorporate them into GSA as representatives or other roles.

Members of both slates plan to reintegrate the University of California Student Association, a systemwide student advocacy group, back into GSA. This quarter, McCoy and Robinson plan to bring a proposal to rejoin UCSA.

UCLA’s GSA left UCSA six years ago because past GSA officers thought UCSA did not provide enough benefits to graduate students to continue the investment.

The concerns facing the forum six years ago no longer pose a problem because UCSA has changed its bylaws to give graduate students a larger voice since then, Robinson said.

Hirshman said that while he understands the need for GSA to be careful about where it puts student fees, he thinks UCSA can help keep both graduate and professional students in the loop about the campus climate at other UC schools.

“We shouldn’t reap the benefits that other schools are putting in and sit on the sidelines,” Hirshman said.

Stanphill said she thinks GSA needs competition among candidates to challenge one another and represent a greater amount of students from diverse academic disciplines.

Robinson said she thinks she could see herself working well with all five other candidates next year.

“It’s not like (undergraduate) elections. (The) slates are less charged,” Robinson said.

Hirshman added that he does not see this election as a clash between slates. He said he hopes voters will look beyond slate names and make decisions based on the quality of the candidates.

“(I hope) it will come down to the individuals and what roles they are fitted for,” Hirshman said.

GSA elections will take place from April 8 to 14. Students will be able to vote online through MyUCLA.