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Wednesday, May 29, 1996

Elected graduate officials plan for association's revivalBy Ryan Ozimek

Daily Bruin Contributor

Facing issues such as a dwindling budget and near invisibility among students, next year's Graduate Students Association (GSA) members are already mapping out battle plans to combat their rough road ahead.

Next year's key leaders, President Chris Tymchuk, Internal Vice President Grace Chee and External Vice President Danise Kimball have begun the project of reviving the dwindling association.

So far, all three incoming officers have talked with various campus organizations and graduate departmental councils on building communication between the groups and the association. Lack of communication has been a major factor in much of the year's problems, association officials cited.

"I've already begun to contact department's council members so that we can try to avoid the problems this year's association had with communication over the summer time," Tymchuk said earlier this month.

One main issue that next year's officers hope to focus on is involving more students in the graduate government through organizations such as the Affirmative Action Coalition.

"I came into office with a lot of things that I wanted to do, but I've come to realize that our foremost priority has to be getting more people involved," Kimball said.

Hoping to have graduate students better understand what the association does for the student body, the upcoming officers want to create an orientation primarily targeted at first-year graduate students. This year's association had planned to do a similar orientation, yet the project was never created.

"An orientation would be useful for incoming graduate/professional students because it would be an opportunity for them to find out what the university community has to offer and how they can get involved," Chee said.

The newly-elected officials would also like to create a textbook lending program through the graduate government. Chee and Kimball hope to work with graduate student representatives in order to discuss which textbooks should be purchased and how the program would be constructed.

Another way that the new officials want to attract attention is to reach out to the many organizations within the graduate student body. By doing so, the association can reach a greater number of students, Chee and Kimball commented.

"I think it is crucial that GSA be a better resource for outreach to graduate/professional student organizations," Chee said.

By this process of "coalition building," the association will assist graduate student and undergraduate organizations, the University of California Student Association and various community grass-roots organizations to help them communicate more with each other.

"Until GSA establishes connections with graduate students, anything it does is quite irrelevant," Kimball said.

Aside from increasing outreach to students, the incoming officers also hope to make changes to the structure of the organization.

"The Forum really has no legitimacy because many graduate students have not had the opportunity to elect a representative for themselves in the Forum," Kimball said.

She also raised the concern that councils may not have informed their constituents and council members that such representative positions are available. She cited such entities as the School of Law and the School of Nursing as those underrepresented in the Forum.

Another problem that next year's officers will face is a shrinking budget. Over the past decade, the association has failed to raise its student fees because of the extremely low voter turnout the association has received.

Without the necessary amount of students voting in the last general election, the association will very likely be forced to cut its funding to programs it solely supported, such as the Environmental Coalition and Melnitz Movies.

Both Chee and Kimball hope getting more students involved in the graduate government will help increase voter turnout, which in turn would lead to funding for those organizations.

"It's a circular approach," Chee said. "By having students more involved with GSA and having accountable representatives, students will feel there is more at stake during elections, and in turn, vote."

The newly-elected internal vice president critiqued the current government and cited fundamental problems with this year's association.

"I think that in its present state, GSA is a disgrace," Kimball summed up. "My sense is that if GSA doesn't improve its accountability to graduate students, it should drop the pretense of being a student representative."

The three elected officers will officially take control of the graduate government on June 1.

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