The Graduate Student Association elected a new president in a landslide vote this week, along with a new vice president and treasurer.
Xun Liu, a two-term president of the Political Science Graduate Student Association, was elected president of GSA. Graduate students also elected Shaokang Wang as their vice president, and an unopposed Vinay Balachandran won the treasurer seat.
Liu crushed Aravind Sampath, an industrial engineering student, and Kannan Nagarajan, a civil engineering student, by over 100 votes; a total of 471 graduate students voted in the election.
Wang defeated electrical engineering student Anirudh Kadiyalah and industrial engineering student Shiva Kashyap by over 140 votes.
Balachandran ran unopposed for treasurer, capturing 353 votes.
Liu, who also served as a GSA senator this year, campaigned with the slogan "UB My First Priority." In his platform, he advocated freezing mandatory fees, extending library hours and scheduling more busses in the evening hours to allow graduate students to work on their research further into the night.
"I understand that most grad students are very busy with their research," Liu said in an interview. "I really appreciate those that came out."
Liu said one of his first priorities as president will be to develop a better relationship with the Graduate Student Employees Union, a statewide union of graduate assistants and teaching assistants.
"I think I want to work very closely with GS(E)U," Liu said. "A lot of grad students work on campus, and they're not aware of when their rights are being violated. We need to make them aware of their rights."
Following the ballot count, Nagarajan filed several complaints with the Elections Committee following the ballot count. Among his 17 allegations were concerns that the time of the ballot count was unfair, and that two candidates were allowed to run without satisfying candidacy requirements.
Vice president-elect Wang supported a platform of funding increases, particularly for student clubs, and election reform.
Wang campaigned on a promise to allocate funds to student clubs based on group size and pledged to increase funding available to beginning student groups.
Wang also supported reform of the GSA election, and sought to make it safer and more technologically reliable while keeping the cost to a minimum, according to his platform.
Wang said the election was a good experience because he ran against two candidates that he respected.
"I do respect my two competitors," he said. "They are very friendly, and very pleasant, and they are real gentlemen."
"I learned a lot from their ideas, and I'm glad we're friends through this election," he added.
Balachandran said one of his first goals as treasurer will be to form a strong working relationship with the other elected candidates.
"They chose the best candidates," he said. "One of the first things I'll do is, along with the president and vice president, form a solid coalition."
Balachandran said he wants to properly allocate student funds and solve problems that graduate students encounter on a regular basis.
He said he plans to work with Sub-Board I, Inc. to procure more funds that can be directed towards graduate students.
Balachandran said he also aims to bring more student jobs on campus by working with academic departments and the Career Center.
While excited about his election, Balachandran said he was disappointed with voter turnout, which was just over 7 percent of the graduate student population. He suggested opening more booths in more places for future elections.
Liu attributed the voter turnout to the fact that polls were open at a time when graduate students were working on research.
"The voting time was very limited," he said. "A lot of students were in their lab at the time."
Brian Vanremmen, a graduate student studying English literature, said he did not vote because he will be graduating soon.
Vanremmen said, however, that he was interested in the results of the election.
"We're all sort of going for the same thing," Vanremmen said. "We're all against the tuition hike. We want to continue the goals of the administration."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
