Graduate Student Senate will have an open forum at the meeting on Tuesday to hear from the candidates who applied for the four different executive positions.
The four positions are president, vice president for finance, vice president for communications and vice president for legislative affairs. Each candidate will have two minutes to introduce themselves and answer a few questions for the body.
GSS President Maria Modayil said there is a resolution for tomorrow’s meeting regarding the four positions.
GSS will also vote on suspending the Senate’s rules and procedures in order to redefine them better and also combine the role of vice president for communications and vice president for legislative affairs, so there will only be three executive positions remaining.
“Once that is completed, the new executives and the old executives would rewrite the new rules and responsibilities because we haven’t gotten much traction around that because people don’t know what those rules and procedures are unless they are serving them,” Modayil said.
Over break, graduate students were able to access the library.
“Unless you are enrolled for the Spring Semester, you couldn’t use the library over break and a lot of graduate students tried to use the library to advance on their research and things like that,” Modayil said.
Modayil said she reached out to administrators who are looking into the issue. GSS is hoping to get doctoral students put into their own separate pool which would allow them to use the library even when they aren’t enrolled in both the Fall and Spring Semesters.
GSS is also interested in the textbook initiative after it was discussed at a recent Board of Trustees meeting. Modayil said she reached out to administrators to discuss how the textbook initiative is currently affecting graduate students and how it will affect them in the future.
GSS is also working towards creating more connections with the alumni association and the advancement offices.
“I am happy about where we are and the gains we’ve made on those fronts it is much further than we have ever been,” Modayil said.
