Second-year law student Ryan Collins claimed victory in the Graduate and Professional Student Federation presidential election on Feb. 19., following a loss in the student body president election to junior Reeves Moseley.
Collins is the current GPSF Treasurer and originally ran for student body president on a platform that highlighted issues including affordability, sexual assault and civic engagement among students.
“Even though I was shifting from one race to the other, it's just that my focus is a bit more on the graduate student population,” Collins said. “A lot of the things that are highlighted in that platform transitioned into the GPSF candidacy with just a more particular focus on graduate students.”
With just a week in between the student body president election and the GPSF president election, Collins said he had to be strategic in reaching out to graduate and professional student voters.
"Reminding them that I was still committed, that even though I was now seeking a different office, I was still committed to a lot of the same platform goals that I'd set forth in the student body president campaign,” Collins said.
Collins’ persistence won him about 93 percent of the vote out of a pool of 13 candidates. 247 people voted out of a pool of 10,409 eligible voters.
“Obviously, for me, it's a very exciting opportunity to me personally,” Collins said. “I have had a ball at Carolina for a long time. I actually went here for undergrad, too.”
As an undergraduate student at UNC, Collins served as Residence Hall Association president.
Chad Lloyd, a graduate student who voted in the election, said Collins’ leadership experience both as an undergraduate and graduate student made him an intriguing candidate.
