The Graduate and Professional Student Federation met on Tuesday to vote on 12 bills and resolutions as well as to hold a 2017 student body elections open forum.
GPSF President Dylan Russell provided an update on the plan for the student government split.
“Tonight we’re going to Congress with a new plan," Russell said. "This plan will allow us to vote for the Board of Trustees seat — in the past, it would always be the undergraduate — and so now graduate professional teams can actually serve as the (Board of Trustees) representative."
Russell said this plan was made with student leaders including Speaker of Student Congress Cole Simons and Student Body President Bradley Opere.
“We sat down together, we made a lot of compromises and concessions and we have a plan that we hope is going to work best for all students while still maintaining a clear split,” Russell said.
Russell introduced a constitutional amendment reorganizing the executive branch to increase its efficiency.
“Our main concern is that the executive branch is just too large right now," Russell said. "There’s no way to consolidate all that information and so we thought by having policy heads, and we also thought it would be nice to have a system like the undergrads have, we could create a legitimate advisory and maintain student representation."
Brian Coussens, GPSF vice president for internal affairs, introduced an amendment to redefine the Senate’s powers.
“Basically, it’s taking the Senate’s powers which are currently spread out all over the Constitution and putting them in one spot and additionally, it’s adding in the new powers that the Senate will have under the joint constitution with the undergraduates,” Coussens said. “So we will now have the power to approve bylaws of independent agencies across the University.”
