The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly elected a new executive board on Wednesday night, filling seven of the nine open posts.
Approximately 50 graduate students convened in Irvine Auditorium room G16 to listen to the election speeches and ask questions of the individuals running for the GAPSA executive board positions.
Wharton graduate student Jeremy Korst was named chairman-elect and will take over the reinsÿfrom current Chairman Christopher Leahy on April 17.
And Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania member Michael Janson was elected vice chairman of the assembly. GET-UP is currently involved in hearings conducted by the National Labor Relations Board over the right of Penn graduate students to unionize.
GAPSA has not yet taken an official stance on the issue of graduate student unionization.
Other newly elected officers include John Jung as vice chairman for policy, Donna Situ as vice chairman for student affairs and Sean Brecker as vice chairman for nominations.
Erika Robbins and Kyle Farley return to their previous positions of treasurer and chairman emeritus, respectively.
Two offices -- vice chairman for special projects and secretary -- remain open, and no students chose to run for the posts. Only the executive board members and GAPSA representatives from the 12 graduate schools were allowed to vote in the elections.
"There were excellent candidates for all positions," Leahy said. "The new board is a great group of people who will be able to work well together. They have a common vision with this year's board about where GAPSA is andÿ[where] it needs to be."
GAPSA serves as one of the representative voices for graduate and professional students at Penn in its role asÿa University-wide student government.ÿConsisting of elected representatives from each of the 12 graduate schools, GAPSA interacts with the administration and other graduate groups on issues that concern graduate students across the University.
"I think GAPSA plays an immensely important role on campus," Korst said in an e-mail statement. "One of our biggest challenges, largely because of the sheer size of our community, is to be able to draw out the various perspectives of our diverse constituency."
In his new role, Korst said he plans to focus on increasing open discussion on issues relating to the graduate community, strengthening GAPSA's relationships with the administration and other groups to improve its representative ability and supporting more interaction among the graduate schools.
According to Leahy, the outgoing board has established a foundation that will allow GAPSA to fulfill its mission as the primary voice of graduate and professional students as a whole.
"I think this year's board has performed fantastically. We've tried to do a lot of things and have succeeded at a lot of things," Leahy said. "We're leaving them with new ideas and progressÿthat they can take and apply their own ideas to."
One of the main goals for GAPSA over the next year is more integration among graduate students from different programs, Jung said in an e-mail.
"We've had some major successes this year with the opening of the Graduate Student Center, and we are looking forward to building upon that success and linking more students from across the University," Jung said in his e-mail.
Though the issue of graduate student unionization was not addressed at length during the election meeting, it remains an issue that will have to be dealt with.
GAPSA differs from other political organizations, and thus, the assembly "has not adopted a formal policy one way or another [on unionization]," Leahy said. Instead, GAPSA has focused on bringing as many different perspectives to the table as possible and to facilitate communication.
"I foresee GAPSA continuing to provide a forum for discussion and debate about the issues that underlay some of our constituents' wishes to unionize," Korst said.
"Additionally, our newly-elected vice chair [Janson] is an active member of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania, and we look forward to his input and perspectives to help the Assembly develop educated advocacy positions over the course of the coming year," Korst added.
GET-UP co-interim spokesman Shane Duarte welcomed Korst's comments.
"GET-UP looks forward to working with the new executive board of GAPSA as it has with the current board," Duarte said. "We continue to believe that GAPSA and GET-UP provide complementary goals within the graduate community."
Regarding Janson's position in GAPSA, Duarte commented that "if it furthers the goal of allowing for open debate, that's great."
GET-UP also had a general meeting on Wednesday night, during which its constitution was introduced. Attendees decided to allow all GET-UP members -- whether they are part of the unit GET-UP seeks to represent in the NLRB hearings or not -- to be eligible to hold elected positions. Nominations for the positions were then held, with elections planned for late April.
