The Graduate Student Senate held its first meeting Friday, introducing its members, new and old, to the role they play on campus.

Two vacancies on the executive council gave GSS an opportunity to hold brief elections and announce the rules for such action.

Stephan Hall, communications student, was elected the representative- at-large and Sandy Reed, PH.D student in higher education and administration was elected to serve as secretary.

According to Hall, his new position will be useful in and out of the classroom.

“I’ll probably use my experiences in GSS in a project at some point in time,” Hall said. “I’ll also use this an experience to write a paper about.”

As Reed has discovered, GSS doesn’t mind being “used” by its members to help them to grow and learn.

“My background is largely in industry, so I’m new to the campus life,” Reed said. “I thought this was an opportunity for me to learn about people in a lot of different areas in the college.”

These two new additions join nine other members to oversee the proceedings of GSS.

With general assembly meetings twice a month, GSS strives to represent the needs of the nearly 3,000 graduate students at the University.

Senators, representatives from each academic department on campus, serve as the liaisons of the organization to the graduate student population.

According to Vice-President Deirdre Rogers, it is the job of senators to keep an accurate record of the meetings and share the agenda with the rest of their department.

“(Senators are) responsible to bring all of the issues brought up back to their department and bring other concerns here,” Rogers said. “The only way that we find out what the graduate students need and want is through our senators.”

With 1 senator for every 50 graduate students in a department, their job is not only to oppose legislation, but recommend it as well.

“If there’s something that you’d like to see get done, a good way to get the entire graduate student body behind it is to propose a bill,” Rogers said. ” The bills go to the entire University, so it’s not just something that ends up in our filing cabinet.”

Some of the work done through GSS legislation of the past includes the creation of a graduate student handbook, an updated GSS constitution and more parking at the Health Center for students. These projects are currently in the works.

GSS also was able to gain extended library hours, beginning soon, on Friday and Saturday nights to better accommodate the schedules of graduate students.

Besides following-up on actions of last year, GSS plans to also focus on issues such as health care and graduate housing. To many GSS members, the creation of a graduate student handbook remains a top priority for this year.

“I think the most important thing that the GSS will do this year is the (creation of) graduate student handbook,” Aji-Ori Agbese, International and Multicultural executive council member said.

“This is where it can protect students from the University, other graduate students and it can help us as well.”

Though the undergraduate population has enjoyed a handbook for years, there has never been one for graduate students.

In past years, students have relied on the information and policies of their individual departments. With the creation of this handbook, all departments will be required to provide the same protection and help to their graduate students.

According to Treasurer Matthew Daley, not only are the year’s projects in order, but so is the funding.

“Our budget is down a bit because of the budget cuts,” Daley said. “But, we carried over a large amount of money, so we’ve managed to stay pretty even to where we were last year.”

With a budget of $35,000, GSS plans to use some of the money for programs and co-sponsoring other organizations where graduate students are a majority.

“Even though we took a budget cut, we’re still in a position to help other organizations,” Daley said. “We’re going to make a real push for programming and co-sponsorships.”

But none of the goals that GSS has for the year could be accomplished without the active role of its senators who also serve on University committees.

“We get a lot of compliments from various administrators because we do accomplish getting representation for the committees,” Shelley Clagg, President, said. “USG is not always that good about it (representation), even though they have the largest numbers.”