The Graduate and Professional Student Government discussed changes in the executive committee structure and upcoming elections at its first meeting of the semester Friday.
GPSG President Ben Verdi led a full assembly discussion on the current committee structure and if it should be changed.
As it stands now, the GPSG vice president is also the chair of the student health and wellness committee. Many members agreed the setup needs to be changed for organization, future assemblies and workload of the vice president.
Members then discussed how they could address these issues. Many said they would like to see the positions split apart in the future, an idea that raised issues about stipends.
“Ultimately, there would need to be more money allotted for that person for that stipend if they were to be separate from the vice president,” Verdi said.
One way to solve this issue would be to combine two pre-existing positions. GPSG Vice President Skyler Hutto suggested combining the vice president and the parliamentarian positions.
“Then you have the additional funding freed up to have a new appointed position that would cover the health and wellness,” Hutto said.
The vice president’s duties take place mainly in the beginning of the term, whereas the parliamentarian’s main duties occur at the end of the spring semester.
“They’re complimentary in that the timelines work out together,” Hutto said.
Other ideas for changing these positions include lowering stipends for executive committee members and combining committees.
Questions were raised over what would happen if the vice president ever needed to take over for the president. Members discussed whether or not the vice president would also stay the committee head of the student health and wellness committee if he needed to take over for the president.
The assembly discussed splitting up the duties of the president among two or three executive committee members.
Although no changes were made at Friday’s meeting, Verdi said this discussion was intended to make sure everyone in the assembly was on the same page about this issue.
“This is something that we’ve been talking about a lot, and I wanted to make sure that everybody had a chance to sort of hear where we’re at internally with this discussion,” Verdi said.
Moving forward, Communications Coordinator Jessie Mroz shared the hiring process and timeline with the assembly.
Elections will happen March 4 for president, vice president, treasurer and parliamentarian.
Also looking ahead, Community Development Coordinator Karisa Millington and Verdi both gave an update on upcoming events for the GPSG. GPSG will partner for an event with the IU Office of Sustainability during its SustainIU Week.
Verdi said he was excited about the week’s theme “Diversity in Sustainability” and hopes GPSG will be able to help sponsor an event.
Before the full GPSG assembly began discussions, Verdi greeted them by congratulating them on their work last semester.
“I am very impressed and very proud of the work we’ve done thus far,” Verdi said. “All of that is really a team effort.”
