No races are contested.
The Graduate Student Senate elections are well into their first day, but to call it a race would be an overstatement, as every candidate is running unopposed.
After Chelsea Foster withdrew her name from the race for vice president for communication, the only contested race, Sarah Kaplan is the only candidate left running for the position.
Unless candidates drop out of the race, President Carl Edward Smith III will serve a second term as president; Liudmila Pestun will serve as the vice president of administration; Sarah Kaplan will be vice president for communication, and Rose Troyer will be vice president of legislative affairs.
Margaret Clark will serve as the senator for the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, and Shaneil Taylor will serve as the senator of International Studies.
Both Pestun and Clark previously served on GSS.
“I’m running for GSS because I want to really take the position and be able to collaborate more with the other senates,” Troyer said. “That’s actually what I’m hoping to do ... help us have a more collaborative space to talk so maybe if we had a meeting once a month or every month just to be on the same page.”
As chief of staff for undergraduate Student Senate, “I’ve already worked with some of the people who are going to be in the position next year,” Troyer said.
Kaplan, as vice president for communication, hopes to involve more of the graduate student body, “especially when it comes to recruitment and letting graduate students know about the events that are going on,” Kaplan said.
“I’m interested in participating in university self-government,” Pestun said. “I hear people talking about Student Senate and graduate senate, and they are very skeptical.”
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Pestun, an international student from Belarus studying international development, wants to speak up on behalf of the graduate student body.
“Our primary objective is to negotiate better conditions for graduate students working on campus to make OU graduate school more competitive,” she said in an email.
More specifically, she wants to work for better health insurance, a decreased general fee and ensured parental leave.
Kaplan, as vice president of communication, wants to improve relations between undergraduates and graduate students.
“I decided to run because I want to make an improvement in the communications of Graduate Student Senate, especially between Graduate Student Senate and the student body,” Kaplan, who has never been in student government before, said.
“I’ve worked for the graduate college for the last three years, and I’ve helped them with special projects and communication,” Kaplan said. “I just think that it’s right up my alley.”
Clark, the current GSS vice president of legislative affairs, will be running for a college senator position.
“I know that a lot of people don’t even really know about a lot of the opportunities that GSS provides,” Clark said. “A lot of people don’t know the different ways that they can be involved and all the other organizations they can reach out to through GSS, so I really hope to kind of spread that information.”
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Taylor is running for a college senator position and this is currently his first year in graduate school.
“As college senator I’m hoping to represent my school well and also to bring across policies of the students ... if they want to see change.”
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