Council chairman shouldn't enter office with an agenda

Editor,

I am running for GPSA council chairman, because I believe the deliberative body needs a neutral facilitator, an officer who does the council's bidding rather than pushes the council in pursuit of a particular political agenda.

We have witnessed the damage done by recent council chairpersons who advocate their personal preferences and concertedly steer meetings in certain directions.

The candidate I ran against last year spent her hours as council chairman conniving against the sitting president and then quit when she didn't get her way. If I had been elected last year, the council would have enjoyed an objective administrator for the entire term.

As council chairman, I will restrict my activities to those explicitly enumerated in the GPSA constitution. I will call and preside over council meetings, supply the agenda and other written materials, moderate with fair parliamentary procedure and represent the council on committees, the executive board and before the administration.

I pledge to help representatives present their legislation and to champion the causes supported by a voting majority of the council. But I will neither prioritize my own personal political positions nor manipulate the council into adopting them.

The other candidate for council chair is running on a vastly different program - one focused on her policy goals. A main plank of her platform, family friendliness and child care, are important issues that directly and indirectly affect graduate and professional students.

If the GPSA council, as a body, formally decided to focus on those areas of concern, I would help facilitate the legislation as council chair and further the cause within constitutionally delimited bounds.

But I do not think it is proper for the council chair to take office with a premeditated agenda. Neither should a sitting council vote for officers based on political postures, because the composition and preferences of the current council will likely change by next fall.

The council chair elected by last spring's council did not represent well the fall's council due to the increase in participation and change in departmental representation. The current council should provide the next council with an objective facilitator, not a prefabricated political agenda.

In meetings with graduate students, the other candidate has spoken of being a council chair akin to the speaker of the house. The speaker of the house is a very political position. It is an officer selected by the majority party who decides what can be brought to the floor. The council chair should be akin to the neutral clerk of the house, not the speaker.

I emphatically encourage the council to not elect a chair who envisions her role to be that of gatekeeper and agenda setter.

Another politically biased part of my rival's candidacy has been to overtly campaign with one of the candidates for GPSA president. The council chair should willingly cooperate with whomever graduate and professional students elect to serve as president.

I have not endorsed either presidential candidate. I would not want positions taken for or against to hamper a working relationship. We all saw the nastiness that occurred last year when the GPSA president and council chair took office at immediate odds.

The GPSA council has a clear choice to make in its election of a chair - a passionate and industrious political advocate or an objective facilitator. Both of us are honest and competent. The choice is about how that competency is applied.

Max Fitzpatrick

UNM student