Student Congress meets with executive branch, discusses future of GPSF

Student Congress met in full Tuesday night to hear messages from the executive branch and discuss the upcoming vote about the future of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation.

What happened?

Six members of office from the executive branch — student body president, student body vice president, chief of staff, student body treasurer, director of state and external affairs and a senior advisor — met with Student Congress to elaborate on their recent initiatives and outline their goals for the year.

Speaker of Student Congress Cole Simons delivered plans for the upcoming vote on Nov. 5 regarding GPSF possibly separating from student government and forming their own governing body.

Who spoke?

Student Body President Bradley Opere opened the discussion by highlighting University Day.

“First things first, today was University Day,” he said. “I was really, really happy to celebrate 223 years of UNC just being the public institution that is.”

He said Student Body Secretary Jared Picot resigned recently.

“The main issue was a question of skill sets, what the job needed,” he said. “Over the course of the last few months, it became clear that what the secretary was really good at was a more reactive role, where I would need to sit down and kind of give him a list of what to do, whereas what the role needed was someone who was more proactive and could get ahead.”

He said a mutual agreement lead to the resignation. Spencer Goodson, a senior advisor, will act as interim Student Body Secretary.

Opere said the executive branch is working to implement 360-degree surveys for members of student government.

“What this is going to allow us to do is have objective metrics around how each department functions and what constitutes success,” he said. “Because even I as student body president have found that we usually very much subjectively look at how successful or unsuccessful the student body president is based off how we like them.”

Simons announced plans for the upcoming vote on Nov. 5 regarding GPSF’s decision to split from student government. He elaborated on this decision and informed the Congress of both sides of the argument. 

“We’re based on a system of collaboration,” he said. “Some, I guess you could say, cracks in the foundation, have shown through in the past five years, where graduate and professional students felt like their voices weren’t being heard.”

He said GPSF rejected the idea of a compromise.

“We had worked out a compromise constitution that the graduate and professional student federation kind of walked away from,” he said.

Simons said while he does not agree with the decision to split, he understands the leadership within GPSF is doing what they think is best for graduate and professional students.

Why was this meeting important?

This session gave members of congress the opportunity to ask Opere questions about recent decisions and plans for the future. Congress also engaged in dialogue concerning GPSF, a possible separation and the upcoming vote.

The student body will vote on whether or not GPSF should separate on Nov. 5.

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