TO THE EDITOR:
In response to the town hall on the role of Graduate and Professional Student Federation in student government: We need more camaraderie, not division.
The issues of the split of GPSF and student government are touched on in the piece, specifically the jeopardization of representation in high level administrative committees and the drastic reworking of student fees. The solution to the problem is to be more inclusive of graduate and professional students in the student government process.
GPSF already has great influence in the current system. For example, in the Student Constitution, the role of the GPSF president is to be the vice president of graduate and professional students and advocate for their needs to the student body president. The SBP must be open to hearing and addressing their issues.
Also, Student Congress should recruit more graduate and professional school members.
Last year, there was a great lack of graduate and professional student representation in Student Congress because no one ran for their seats in Student Congress. Adding more seats to Student Congress will not fix this problem, only make it worse.
If you are unable to fill the 15 seats that are currently allocated to graduate and professional representatives, adding 20 more and a proportional amount of undergraduate seats will only skew the ratio further towards the undergraduates.
When I was the chairperson of the Rules and Judiciary Committee of Student Congress last year, many leaders in student government, both graduate and undergraduate, came together to address this problem.
Our solution: more power and inclusion of GPSF in the student government process. Hopefully, leaders can again come together to make student government a more inclusive and representative body.
