The Graduate and Professional Student Association may lose about 345 members depending on the results of a vote today.
The Student Bar Association, which represents UNM’s School of Law, called a vote to determine whether the law school students will secede from GPSA to form their own organization.
Law student Genevieve Graham, who helped with the planning stages for the vote, said some law students want to secede from GPSA to have more control over student government.
“For quite some time now, GPSA’s interests have not been aligned with law school interests,” she said. “The law school students are capable of governing themselves.”
GPSA President Lissa Knudsen said if the law school secedes, GPSA will lose funding from the student fees brought in by the school, estimated at more than $8,500.
“We would lose about 345 people at $25 a head,” she said. “We would also miss their expertise.”
Knudsen said law school students make about double that money back in a typical year through GPSA programs such as tuition assistance and specialized travel grants.
“If they were to secede, it would probably benefit the other departments, because I think the law school people take the most money from us. But we would still miss them,” she said. “It’s important to keep all the campuses together.”
Knudsen said the law school students would lose these benefits from GPSA if they seceded and GPSA won’t be hurt by the $8,500 lost.
“I hope they understand what we won’t be doing for them anymore,” she said.
The election will be held by electronic vote, and the results will be binding, Graham said. She said that after the election, the proposed new organization will have to be approved by the Board of Regents.
Graham said she thinks the law students are generally in favor of seceding from GPSA.
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“As we put some more opinions out there and had forums and sent e-mails, we were sort of pleased to find most students were in support of this,” she said.
Knudsen said there is a core group of law school students involved in the secession process, but most law students don’t have a strong opinion on the issue.
“I think there’s a group that are pro-secession, maybe a couple dozen of them,” she said. “And then I think there’s a large amount that don’t know very much about it and don’t care.”
The law school students have not designed a framework of what their new governmental body would look like, Graham said.
“We put in place an advocacy position, someone that would advocate in Santa Fe, but we haven’t done more than that because we want to see what happens in the vote tomorrow,” she said.
Knudsen said she’s not sure how GPSA will reorganize itself if the law school secedes.
“I think I’d like to see how the vote turns out first, but I think I will be working pretty closely with the new president, if they do secede,” she said.
Graham also doesn’t know what the Student Bar Association will do if the vote is not in favor of seceding from GPSA.
“I don’t see that scenario happening,” she said. “Either way, we would still be in support of GPSA and ASUNM.”
