by Katy Knapp
Daily Lobo
According to unofficial results, Buckner Creel was re-elected president of GPSA Thursday with 408 votes.
Andrea Gunderson, Creel's opponent in the election, received 284.
She said she hopes there are more lobbying efforts by the Graduate and Professional Student Association in the coming year and communication gaps between departments are closed.
"There are some communication problems between departments," Gunderson said. "There are a lot of complaints that there isn't enough funding for some programs, while others get more funding. There needs to be some community effort to get funding that would benefit all departments."
Creel agreed there is little communication between departments.
"Graduate students and professional students only take courses in their department," he said. "As a physics student, I'm not taking history courses or nursing, so we don't get exposure to those other departments. There is very little cross communication."
He said he plans to work on this in the next year. One way he hopes to do so is by continuing the biweekly Coffee Hour, where graduate students are invited to Higher Grounds in the SUB for coffee, tea or a snack - courtesy of GPSA.
"It's been popular," Creel said. "We've been getting 30 to 40 people recently."
Creel said he wants to create a larger sense of community within GPSA.
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"We don't want to have groups that feel they are on the outside looking in," he said.
For that, he said he wanted to create a programming committee.
"That would create a sense of GPSA being there for graduate students," Creel said.
Gunderson, who has one year left in law school, said she plans to still participate in GPSA next year.
Pavan Madhira, chair of the Elections Committee for GPSA, said 10 percent of the 5,134 people who received online ballots through e-mail voted. A total of 511 online votes were cast.
There were a total of 181 paper ballots cast in the election.
Madhira said the election ran smoothly and GPSA experienced no problems with online voting.
As for lobbying efforts, Creel said he is looking into getting access to funds for low-income students in need of child care through the state.
"I'm trying to see if that's just a regulation that needs to be changed, or if it requires legislation," he said.
Gunderson said she wanted to thank Creel for a clean campaign and congratulate him on his win.
Creel accredited the lack of dirt in the campaign to their professionalism.
"We're both professionals and colleagues at the same time," he said. "And it was run with both of us having a sense of wanting to better the program. It was run very collegial."
Editor's note: Madhira usually posts the Daily Lobo to the Web but won't be doing so for the duration of the election to avoid a conflict of interest.
