Faced with two conflicting constitutions, graduate students voted last night to prevent students not elected as representatives to GPSC from holding office in the graduate student orgainization.

A motion, which was brought up due to confusion in the council's laws, would have allowed graduate students who were not representatives in the council to run for the positions of executive vice president and treasurer.

The positions of president and administrative vice president would still have needed to be filled with elected representatives.

The motion, which would have needed 16 votes to pass, was supported by only 11 representatives at last night's meeting. Only 16 representatives attended the meeting.

"The motion failed due to a lack of participation," said Kirsten Copeland, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council.

Early last fall, GPSC adopted several changes to its constitution. Among the changes was a motion similar to last night's.

The constitution was amended at that time, but there is no record of the vote itself. As a result, GPSC did not know if the changes to election policy were valid.

After representative elections in late March, GPSC representatives discovered that two different versions of the GPSC constitution were being used interchangeably by the organization.

One version of the constitution allowed both elected and alternative representatives to run for officer positions, but the other allowed only elected representatives to run.

Each college has one alternate representative position, said GPSC Elections Director Holly Mandes.

In order to become an alternate representative, graduate students contact the GPSC president and tell her that they want to be alternates, Mandes said.

The president then brings the student's proposal to the council. A majority of the GPSC representatives then vote to elect the student as an alternate.

Mandes said that this is very different from elected representatives, who must be voted into office by the graduate students in the college they represent.

Grad students can still petition the GPSC president to be alternate representatives, but they can no longer run for officer elections.

Copeland said she hopes GPSC will eventually hold elections similar to ASUA - in which officers are elected by a popular vote.

"That's not logistically possible right now," she said.

She said the lack of participation in GPSC makes it impossible to hold popular elections for officers.

This petition would have allowed more graduate students to get involved with GPSC, Copeland said.