The last GSS meeting with the current executive committee was held Monday night, and the heirs-apparent were formally announced.
Martin Walker, representing anthropology, and Damien Pitts, representing sociology, are formally running to be president and vice president of GSS, respectively. The two are running unopposed, so their positions for next year’s GSS are guaranteed.
Amanda Sanford, current GSS president, said that it’s not uncommon for the executives of GSS to run unopposed. Both she and GSS vice president Ali Brewer ran unopposed, and their predecessors also ran unopposed.
Because SGA elections will happen prior to the April GSS meeting, Monday’s meeting was effectively the last GSS meeting with Sanford and Brewer as president and vice president.
Sanford said that she has enjoyed the experience as GSS president and that she’s very satisfied with how her term has turned out.
“I’m really, really pleased with the way that GSS has operated this year,” Sanford said. “I think that we’ve done a couple of things that really have had or will have a meaningful impact on the quality of grad student life rather than just being a ceremonial branch of SGA.”
Brewer also was pleased with the work she and GSS had accomplished during her time as vice president.
“I think we’ve passed some really great policy measures,” Brewer said. “… Through our efforts, we’ve created some things that are going to last for a very long time.”
Sanford and Brewer both cited the Leave of Absence Policy, the resolution for Domestic Partner Benefits and obtaining a university-wide graduate student orientation as major achievements of which they’re proud.
“It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been a lot of fun,” Sanford said.
SGA Campaigns
Representatives from the three SGA campaigns were invited to speak at the Monday night GSS meeting. Sanford said she invited the candidates to speak because SGA represents the entire student body, including graduate students.
Amplify was the first to speak. Some of their policies they promoted included gender-neutral housing, more parking for student employees and creating an umbrella rental system.
Lindsay Lee, the presidential candidate for Amplify, spoke of taking SGA “to the next level” and making it something that matters to the student body.
“We believe your SGA should never have the opportunity to just sit on the sidelines while the administration does things and enacts policies without undergraduate student input,” Lee said. “… SGA should matter to students and students should matter to SGA.”
Jake Baker and Paige Atchley of the Baker-Atchley campaign spoke second, the two running for SGA president and vice president, respectively. They discussed their theme of transparency and accountability, which they illustrate using their last names for their campaign as opposed to the more commonly used “action-verb” campaign titles.
Some of their campaign goals include getting scantrons in the POD Markets around campus, adding a parking lot section to the UT app, and finding a way to improve students’ ability to get an appointment at the Student Health Center.
“Right now I know on my Facebook,” Baker explained, “every other status update is somebody complaining how they haven’t been able to get an appointment at the Student Health Center for two weeks,” Baker said.
The third and final SGA campaign to talk to GSS was Engage UT, headed by presidential candidate Christian Powers.
One of the big goals of Engage UT was working with Career Services to create a Smokey’s Closet, which would rent out business attire for students needing to do job interviews who not have appropriate business-formal clothing.
All three campaigns have Facebook pages dedicated to their policy and campaigns.
Student Leave of Absence Policy
Sanford also announced that the Leave of Absence policy that GSS passed in January has received some recommendations from the graduate school administration.
Sanford said that there was some confusion and concern about wording and definitions regarding the policy’s plan for covering academic and financial issues.
The intention of the plan was to allow graduate students who receive stipends to maintain them even if they have to take a leave of absence. This would be under the control of the graduate school.
However, the grad school took issue with the wording of the policy where it appears to dictate control over how individual departments handle the academic responsibilities of absent grad students, rather than give control to the departments.
This is why the grad school is recommending that the policy be split into two, to create a separate policy to show that departments will handle the academic side and the grad school will handle the financial aspect.
“They want us to divide that out so it doesn’t look like we’re mandating or dictating to the departments on how to handle the academic side of it,” Sanford explained. “It’s totally in the policy now as discretionary, but they want us to separate (the policy) and make sure it’s emphasized that we’re not trying to step on anyone’s toes.”
Sanford said the reason for having both academic and financial protections in one policy because it was meant to cover grad students who receive stipends and pay for assistantships. These individuals are both students and employees, so academics and financial protection needed to be grouped together, Sanford said.
