Graduate Student Senate: Candidates looking to increase historically low voter turnout

About 5,000 graduate students attend Ohio University, but last academic year 128 of those students voted for Graduate Student Senate representatives.

The GSS race for the 2017-18 academic school year is largely unopposed. The people running for positions, however, hope to have greater visibility and get more people to vote.

“Graduate Student Senate has had a hard time representing to the administration, and everyone involved, how graduate student voices matter,” Maria Modayil, who is running for president of GSS, said. “We have about 5,000 students and having 100 votes is a really small percentage of it.”

Modayil said it’s important to show that graduate students care about having a voice within the administration and changing what life for graduate students is like on campus.

“Our idea is we just want greater visibility of this election process and have more people even be involved in the election process, so we can justify some of these things,” Modayil said. “We want the administration to take note of or to say even that graduate students care about such political issues or a body.”

Modayil is running for president on the GLocals ticket. All but three of the candidates running for GSS positions are on that ticket, and there are three contested races.

Jivanto van Hemert, the GSS Board of Elections chair, said he hopes graduate students would still be motivated to vote during GSS elections because they get to select the student leaders who will represent them and their interests, even if the race is unopposed.

“There is always opportunity for a write in candidate, so folks shouldn't assume that elections are decided just because many of the seats are uncontested,” he said in an email. “I encourage students to look critically at the candidates (and the initiatives they identify as priorities) to select the candidates that will best represent the needs of graduate students in the coming year.”

Historically, voter turnout for graduate students has been low. During the 2016-17 GSS election, 128 students voted, and two positions were contested. The year before, 83 students voted for GSS representatives, which is about a 1.7 percent voter turnout rate. No students ran opposed that year. Van Hemert said he anticipates similar numbers this year.

However, GSS elections for next academic year’s body coincide with the elections for Student Senate. That didn’t always happen in the past, and van Hemert hopes it will affect the voter turnout.

“While folks clearly approach the two campaigns very differently, it is my hope that this alignment both in timeline and physical location will draw more visibility to the fact that (GSS) elections are occurring and thus encourage greater voter turnout,” he said in an email.

Elections begin at 8 a.m. Monday and will end at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Election results will be announced Tuesday at approximately 8:30 p.m. in the Bobcat Student Lounge on the first floor of Baker Center.

@maddiecapron

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