During a lengthy General Assembly Meeting Tuesday, Abigail LaBella was elected president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council.
In an election process that spanned nearly two hours, GPSC elected three other positions—several other offices will be voted upon at the April meeting. All winning candidates currently serve in the GA.
LaBella, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in genetics and genomics, said that she plans to increase awareness to students who are not in the GA.
“I think the biggest action item is making sure that every graduate and professional student knows that they are a member of the graduate and professional student council and are represented by a Graduate and Professional Student Council member,” said LaBella, who previously served as GPSC's vice president.
She said she intends to be inclusive throughout her tenure as president.
“Every graduate and professional student should feel free to come to our meetings, express their concerns, and even come to me,” LaBella said.
Traditionally, candidates speak for three minutes and receive questions for two, but times were lengthened according to Lanair Lett, a masters student in Biostatistics.
Lett, who is not a member of the General Assembly, asked candidates if they could name an event addressed the issue of diversity on campus, and was unsatisfied with their responses.
“The whole conversation was a formality,” Lett said.
Lett said that responses pushed action to next year rather than generating solutions.
At the end of the meeting, Lett said he wanted the General Assembly to respond to an incident Saturday night concerning a group of African-American students on Duke’s campus who were the target of a racist chant. He noted that undergraduates have been asking broadly for reform from the Duke administration.
LaBella said that, although GPSC director of advocacy was currently out of town, he could email her or LaBella about putting a “call to action” in the GPSC newsletter.
“If you want a statemet of support…if there’s an action item we can help you with, bring it to us,” LaBella said.
Connie Chai will succeed LaBella as the Vice President. Chai, an MBA candidate in the Fuqua School of Business, previously ran for Graduate Young Trustee.
Biochemistry representative Abhishek Chhetri will serve as the attorney general for the 2015-16 academic year, and Malcolm Bonner, a representative in economics and computations, will be the director of finance.
The Council also passed the GPSC budget for the following year after lengthy discussion about the nature of the large surplus that the finance committee intends to spend over the next two years.
Director of Finance Sahil Chaini, a representative from the Nicholas School for the Environment, said that ideally around $20,000 would be kept in reserves, however currently the amount in excess is $38,000. She accredited this to responsible spending and fiscal conservation on the part of the finance committee in the past.
Representatives shared concerns about what would happen at the end of the two years of over-spending, as well as the resolution they passed to increase the Student Activity Fee charged to students.
The budgeted expenses, which includes the expected revenue of $154,800 is $177,500. Items that will receive more funding include the General Assemby’s budget, caucus budget and the special events fund.
In other business:
The GPSC unanimously approved minor changes to the Basketball Committee Policy, including an extension of the exemptions policy, which concerns having to miss all or part of the GPSC campout.
Executive Secretary Tiffany Wilson, a 6th year PhD candidate, presented the results of the Duke Body Survey. Although 88 percent of students knew they had a representative in the GPSC, only 68 percent of respondents knew who that representative is.
The Cyclist Safety Meeting will be held on Thursday, March 26 at 5:30pm in the GPSC house.
On April 11 members of the Graduate School will participate in Duke in Durham Day, during which they will complete community service projects around the city. There will be 12 partner organizations and around 200 students are expected to attend.
Prior to the GPSC talent show on March 26th, the Outreach Committee will host "Pack and Party," during which they will pack hygiene kits for Durham Urban Ministries in the Love Auditorium.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.