I agree with others who have written about the GPSA elections. GPSA and graduate and professional students deserve a GPSA president who can continue to bring change. We also need someone who can work with our administration and hold it accountable.
I have tried to do both of these things over the past year and have realized how valuable it is to build relationships with administrators, faculty and staff and other key decision makers and supporters of graduate and professional students. I feel I have been respected to both agree and disagree with administrators because I took the time to work with them.
B. Lee Drake has tremendous experience with College Democrats, the Barack Obama campaign, as a GPSA council representative from Anthropology and as an ad-hoc GPSA committee chairman who continues to bring change to GPSA and UNM.
While he may not replicate all of the initiatives I implemented as GPSA president, I trust he will take the best of what we did, learn from our mistakes and bring his own best sense of working with others and meeting the needs of UNM's diverse graduate and professional students. Specifically, I feel he will lobby for our issues, activate us and other students, and work with the broadest group of students, faculty, staff and others like the local community, our state legislators and congressional delegation. His experience at the state and national levels of government will assist GPSA in advocating for graduate and professional students at the New Mexico State Legislature and with Congress.
Drake has a track record of being a committed student leader who is hard working, honest and a team player. With many conversations we have had over the last year, I see Drake as the thoughtful leader who realizes he doesn't know it all but can work with others to get the job done. Drake is willing to work with ASUNM, faculty, staff and the UNM administration. I also have no doubt that he can stand up for graduate and professional students when addressing President David Schmidly, the provost or the Board of Regents.
Further, I support Drake's plans to make GPSA grants more effective and further consolidate some of the standing and ad-hoc committees. We've already started that work through a proposed consolidation of the Student Research Allocations Committee and Specialized Travel Committee. I encourage graduate and professional students to also vote for that GPSA constitutional revision.
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The GPSA president needs to be able to work with a diverse group of students. He or she needs to bring us all to the table, and listen to and advocate for all of our issues. The GPSA president, like President Obama, also needs to be able to give us hope and be positive about our work together. Drake brings energy, ideas and the willingness to work with others. He brings the hope GPSA needs and the vision that we can respectfully work with one another, ASUNM, faculty, staff and the UNM administration to do right by graduate and professional students.
I will be voting for Drake as GPSA president, and I hope you will, too.
Christopher Ramirez is the president of GPSA.
