Graduate students make up 15 percent of the University of Oregon but zero percent of the ASUO senate. With the notable exception of ASUO president Sam Dotters-Katz, graduate students aren’t very present in the ASUO. However, the upcoming spring election could change graduate student senate representation.
Constitution Court rejected a ballot measure proposed by Lamar Wise regarding senate reapportionment to increase graduate student representation within the ASUO senate but approved a similar ballot measure by senator Amy Jones weeks later.
Wise’s ballot measure would have allowed there to be four unique graduate student seats without adding any new seats to senate. The ballot measure submitted by Wise was rejected for its language and potential to violate the ASUO constitution.
Jones’ ballot measure would add three seats to ASUO senate whereas Wise’s ballot measure would allow four graduate student seats within the current number of seats in the ASUO senate.
“The major difference is that it’s actually adding seats to senate,” Wise said. “So there would be more senators. But mine was more so about keeping the same amount and reapportioning the seats to make sure that there was graduate student representation.”
If passed, Jones’ ballot measure would expand the senate to 24 members, including graduate students. The current ASUO senate is comprised of 21 senators: ten elected at large, ten academic seats and one non-voting freshman representative.
Any changes made by the ballot measure would take effect during the next scheduled reapportionment in the spring of 2015, based on that year’s student population.
If passed, the ballot measure would not automatically give all three new senate seats to graduate students.
“What it does is (increase) the amount of academic seats but makes the math work so that there will be a graduate student seat,” Jones said. “Because they have so many students in the graduate programs right now, they’ll already have guaranteed one seat but they might even have two if they have enough students in those programs at the time of reapportionment.”
According to Jones, adding more senate seats would also help to correct the representation of academic majors after population growth.
“In years past there were nine academic senators for around 18,000 students and as the population grew they added another academic senator so we now have ten,” Jones said. “But now if you look at the math you have approximately 24,600-ish students and they are trying to fit more and more students into the same number of academic seats so it’s harder to represent that many people.”
The Ducks Like You campaign has endorsed the proposed ballot measure. The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation currently sponsors the Ducks Like You campaign; DLY is currently the only campaign with graduate students on its slate.
“One of our main things in the campaign in trying to reach out to a lot of the community that haven’t been represented in the student government,” DLY presidential candidate Beatriz Gutierrez said.