GPSA is here to serve you, and that's just what it does

Editor,

I recently learned that law students are deliberating whether the UNM School of Law should secede from the Graduate and Professional Students Association. The main argument seems to be that the GPSA has deviated from its main role: Namely, that we’ve taken controversial positions on issues that are none of our business and, therefore, roles intended for us have suffered. The argument goes on to say that the GPSA should mind its own business and take care of the basic functions for which we were created. To this I respond that we’re performing the basics extremely well and that our business is what our constituents tell us it is.

Our office is open during regular hours every school day, most nights and some weekends. It is where we come for help with our everyday needs — a place of camaraderie where peers help peers every day because our mostly volunteer staff is made up entirely of graduate and professional students. It is a place where we can come to use computers, print for free, fax, scan, make copies, heat food and drinks, work in groups, enjoy a bag lunch, hold meetings, or just hang out. Last month the GPSA Council allocated $6,700 to buy a new printer to replace one that is falling apart from printing one too many term papers.

Our grants committees have been doing a professional job of distributing funding to dozens of needful and deserving graduate and professional students while converting the cumbersome paper grants process to a more streamlined online system. Last month, the GPSA Council allocated $15,000 to hire professionals to complete the conversion process. Led by two brilliant grants committee chairs, dozens of volunteer readers — myself included — are evaluating 135 more grant applications right now. Many hands make light work.

Another role of the GPSA is to represent graduate and professional students at the Board of Regents’ meetings and subcommittees. When President Lissa Knudsen, our official representative, cannot make a meeting, I can usually cover for her. In addition, she has appointed many graduate and professional students to represent their peers at various important advisory boards throughout UNM.

Our GPSA legislative advocates have successfully lobbied the New Mexico State Legislature to keep tuition down, fund student bus passes and keep the all-important graduate student grants funded. In addition, they champion causes graduate and professional students tell them are important, like domestic partnership, expanding our Children’s Campus and creating a better, more transparent and shared governance at UNM.

It has always angered me when anyone or any group tells a representative body what is or isn’t within its purview in an attempt to stifle the voice of the people. I’ve heard this said of a city council that “signed” the Kyoto Protocol and a county commission that denounced a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of using eminent domain powers for economic development purposes. What these would-be usurpers of our First Amendment right of free speech via the megaphone of an elected, general-purpose representative body do not understand is that the purview of said body is only bounded by the wishes of the body’s constituents.

So it is with the GPSA Council and its representatives. As their elected chairman, I’m proud to say that they really listen to the concerns of their constituents and act accordingly. The plain proof is in the sometimes-heated discussions and in the success of our recent special election. Look at the results. Look at the huge turnout. Can anyone say that we’re not doing what our constituents are asking of us? Isn’t that what democracy and self-governance is all about?

Danny Hernandez
GPSA council chairman