This week’s election is the first contested Graduate Student Senate race in seven years.
Current Graduate Student Senate President Tracy Kelly is running for her third term and in her first contested election, against John Calhoun, Student Senate’s university life commissioner.
The last contested presidential race was held in 2004 when Heather Brooke
Dagnan beat out Jeremy Valeda and Amanda Jo Hobson.
“My sense at least … is there are some years that were contested and
some weren’t,” Dagnan said, later adding that the main topics of the campaign
were student health insurance and graduate student unions.
Kelly said a contested election is great for Graduate Student Senate.
“It shows the fact people really want to get involved,” Kelly said.
The competition has made the election more fast paced and filled with positive pressure and a lot more coverage, she said.
Calhoun said he contemplated running for four or five months.
“It’s been awhile since anyone had a choice,” he said.
Calhoun said he started preparing early because a key part to the election is doing your homework on topics and candidates, organizing information and paying attention to what’s happening at OU.
“I see it as a challenge and dynamic learning experience,” he said.
Unlike the Student Senate elections, both candidates have had no incidents with negative campaigning, said Keaunna Cleveland, vice chairwoman of the Board of Elections.
“Everything has gone pretty smooth,” she said.
Next year, Cleveland hopes to have at least one debate where the candidates can speak about their platforms. This year, the board did not hold a debate.
“It was offered; neither president was interested enough,” Cleveland said.
The board is made up of only two graduate students — Cleveland and Chairman John Hummell. The board is responsible for checking the qualifications of students running, preventing foul play, setting up online voting and reporting the data after the election.
“It’s a much smaller scale operation (compared to Student Senate elections),” Hummell said, adding that he did not know how many people served on the board in previous elections.
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