by Jeremy Hunt
Daily Lobo
Members of GPSA started a petition Friday to recall their president, Joseph Garcia.
They say Garcia has ignored mandates by the graduate and professional student council. But Garcia says the recall is unwarranted because he and other members of GPSA have expanded the office's role and helped a lot of students.
The members heading the recall effort have more than enough signatures to recall Garcia, Rep. Jason Thomas said. As of Sunday, they counted about 130 signatures, Thomas said.
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He said the petition will be presented to the council at its next meeting in December.
Garcia said the members heading the recall effort are upset because they want to have total control
over GPSA.
"It's a political vendetta," he said. "They're trying to further their own agenda."
The petition states Garcia should be recalled because he did not manage the GPSA grant process and oversee the timely dispersal of the Student Research Allocations Committee funds or Special Travel Committee funds.
Thomas said that for the past five years, GPSA sent grant confirmation letters six weeks after the application deadline. Students should have received the letters in mid-September, he said.
"There has not been any letters sent out," he said. "It seems like a long time since these things could have been taken care of and haven't been."
The grant letters were sent out Tuesday, said Max Fitzpatrick, chairman of the Student Research Allocations Committee.
Every application is read by three volunteer readers who score them to determine who receives what funding, if any, according to the GPSA constitution.
Fitzpatrick said there were 86 applications and 12 readers. The readers did the best they could, but graduate students have busy lives, he said.
"You cannot start awarding people until all of the applications have been scored at least three times," he said.
He said the constitution does not state how long the process should take, but it's not up to
Garcia.
"It had nothing to do with the president," he said. "I don't see how that is grounds for recalling somebody."
Rep. Gene Henley said Garcia should have ensured the letters went out sooner.
"I don't think it's unreasonable for them to find out within six weeks," he said. "This is further proof that (the GPSA office) isn't running fine."
The petition states that Garcia failed to hire a three-quarter-time employee to work in the GPSA office as directed by the council. The council passed a resolution to hire the employee in March 2006 before Garcia became president.
The three-quarter-time employee would get about $31,000 a year in compensation, including benefits such as health care, said Isaac Padilla, chairman of the council's finance committee.
The position was funded by increasing graduate student fees by $5 per semester to $25.
Garcia said he could not hire anyone for the job because its funding wasn't available until the council approved it at the last meeting of the spring 2007 semester.
Human Resources must approve a job description for the job because it would be a UNM staff position.
At the Sept. 8 GPSA meeting, the council voted to require the GPSA Executive Board to submit the job description within two weeks, but that has yet to happen,
Thomas said.
The GPSA member in charge of compiling the description missed the deadline, but Garcia said he is working to get the description
approved.
The petition also states Garcia did not get authorization from the council to hire two part-time employees to help run the office.
Garcia said he hired graduate students to work in the office, and it is creating more opportunities and assistance for graduate
students.
The employees are paid about $10 an hour for 20 hours of work a week, and they don't get paid overtime, Padilla said.
Garcia said he didn't need the council's approval to hire them because the constitution requires him to handle operations of the GPSA office.
Henley said Garcia hired his friends, Fitzpatrick and Danny Hernandez, to work in the office.
"That's expressly what we did not want," he said. "That's
unacceptable."
Hernandez did not return phone calls Tuesday.
Garcia said he hired the students based on their merits.
"They weren't my friends before I hired them," he said. "In the course of the time since I hired them, they may have become my friends."
Henley said that at the last few meetings, the council has asked GPSA's Finance Committee to present a budget for the office showing how the student employees are paid. Their pay should not come from the money that was supposed to be used for the three-quarter-time employee, he said.
"Everything may well be kosher, but I would like to see something in the record," he said.
Padilla said the council never asked for a breakdown of the office budget.
"If that's something that the council wants done, all they have to do is ask for it, and I'll do it," he said.
Henley said GPSA has spent too much time lately discussing resolutions that deal with the Iraq war, anti-discrimination and diversity.
"I have not had one student come forward to me to say any of those issues are relevant to the graduate-professional student body," he said. "That is not the purview of student government."
Garcia said University
administration asked GPSA to give opinions on issues of hate crimes, discrimination and diversity. He said those issues and the Iraq war are important to students.
Garcia said that since he has been president, GPSA has taken a new direction and has garnered support from state legislators, city councilors and University administration. But he said it has not affected the day-to-day operations of the council.
"GPSA is being taken possibly more seriously than in the past," he said. "We've become a tremendous voice in the community."
Thomas said the council no longer represents all graduate students.
"There are many GPSA reps that feel like the democratic process has been circumvented in lots of issues," he said.
Garcia said some members want him recalled because they are upset their choice for president wasn't elected in 2006. He said they wouldn't look at him or talk to him for a while after he was first elected.
"I've had to deal with that kind of attitude since I've been GPSA president," he said.
Thomas said the recall petition will be presented at the council's Dec. 1 meeting. A recall election must be held 20 business days after the signatures are presented, according to the GPSA constitution.
Because of winter break, the election would likely not be held until the spring semester, Thomas said. The election would decide whether Garcia should be removed. If he is, there will be another election to replace him for the remainder of his term, which ends in June.
