The Graduate and Professional Student Council elected new officers to its executive board in a three-hour meeting Tuesday night.
Current GPSC Executive Secretary Daniel Griffin, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in classical studies, was elected president. Four other presidential candidates were considered. Felicia Hawthorne, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in genetics and genomics, was elected vice president. Alana Belcon, a thid-year Ph.D. candidate in the Nicholas School of the Environment was elected executive secretary.
“[The general assembly] took a long time [to elect officials] but I think the time was well spent and we elected excellent leaders for GPSC next year,” said outgoing GPSC Vice President Adam Pechtel, a third-year law student.
Griffin has served two years as a department representative, and has also served on the Library Advisory Committee, the Duke Chief of Police Selection Committee and the Society of Duke Fellows.
“One of the things I want to do on GPSC is to make sure all graduate students have the same great time at Duke that I’ve been lucky enough to experience,” Griffin said.
Griffin said that as GPSC president he hopes to increase transparency and planning, take advantage of new media, bring together all graduate and professional students and increase career planning options.
One point that set Griffin apart from his contenders was his interest in addressing “mental health concerns.” About 50 percent of the referrals at Counseling and Psychological Services come from the graduate school, Griffin said.
“This is a problem across the country with graduate and professional students—not just the increased individual pressure people place upon them, but... dealing with meeting new people and really being able to thrive regardless of the situation,” Griffin said.
He added that GPSC should help keep students happy, healthy and successful.
“I’m looking forward to working with this great group of people that we’ve elected to really make the graduate and professional student experience at Duke fun, memorable and productive,” Griffin said after the elections.
Many positions had no nominations before the election, so some were nominated at the meeting but many nominees declined and one candidate was elected by default.
Pechtel said a lack of nominees had been a problem at past elections—usually only the president and vice president positions are heavily contested and there is not a vote on the other positions. This year there were more opportunities for interested students to learn about the positions before running for one, he added.
“I suspect that most people that took positions tonight that weren’t pre-nominated were aware of the responsibilities and will be strong members of the executive board next year,” Pechtel said.
In other business:
The newly elected Basketball Committee co-chairs, Rebecca Wilusz and Allison Schmitt, were approved by the GPSC general assembly. Wilusz is a biomedical engineering graduate student and Schmitt is a graduate student in chemistry. The new Basketball Committee policy for Campout was also approved.
Some GA members were concerned about an addition to the policy which states that students can be disqualified from the lottery or removed from the Campout because of “excessive alcohol consumption that threatens the safety of the student or others.” Most were worried that the term “excessive alcohol consumption” was too vague.
The incoming Basketball Committee co-chairs said they will look for signs of alcohol poisoning in students who may have consumed alcohol excessively.
“We’ve had situations where people don’t really understand when enough is enough,” Wilusz said.
GA members were also concerned about the possibility of not being able to have RVs at Campout next year. The co-chairs said the location had not been chosen yet, but they will comply with whatever the Department of Athletics recommends. They added that they will fight for what is in students’ best interest, which for many, means more space for RVs.
Fallon Ukpe, GPSC Student Group Liaison and a student in the School of Medicine, updated the GA on the effects of the recently passed health care reform bill. She said a lot of the effects will not be seen until as late as 2014, and the most important change is that students can stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.
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