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By Melanie Klein
Arizona Daily Wildcat
August 22, 1996
The union between the UA's two student governing bodies has finally come to an end after three years of butting heads.Administrators approved the separation and divided up the budget at the beginning of August. The proposal is now awaiting the approval of the Graduate and Professional Student Council and the Associated Students.
According to Saundra Taylor, vice president for Student Affairs, as of last week, ASUA President Rhonda Wilson has said she wants to add a clause to the proposal that would state all money allocated to and not spent by GPSC would be returned to ASUA.
Alex Sugiyama, president of GPSC, said last week he had not yet seen the proposal.
Both were unavailable for comment yesterday.
GPSC, the representative body for graduate students, officially began it's quest for independence in March of 1995 after two years as a governing body within ASUA.
Members of the council have said they were unhappy with ASUA's current structure of allocating money, its legislative practices and the programs it offers to graduate students.
The two bodies began working toward a separation, but they could not come to an agreement on the necessity to separate or how to divide the finances.
By February of last year, UA administration stepped in and imposed a deadline demanding that the two groups come up with a proposal that accommodates both organizations. But the deadline came and went without an agreement.
This summer, Michael Cusanovich, vice president for research and graduate studies, and Taylor hammered out a proposal for them.
"We spent hours hashing out what would be fair for both groups," Taylor said.
A preliminary draft was submitted to each group over the summer, and with recommendations from both groups, Taylor and Cusanovich began to renegotiate.
"Compromise" is how Taylor described the process, which allocated nearly three times more money for GPSC's budget than the council received last year.
Undergraduate Senate President Gilbert Davidson said ASUA members have echoed concerns that GPSC did not spend all of its $26,000 budget last year, leaving a surplus of $6,698.
Sugiyama explained that the money was being held over to eventually pay for Student Showcase, an event that displays the research and creative work of graduate students.
"Part of the reason the money was still around was because we had not received a final bill for the Showcase," said Sugiyama, who added that the remaining money in the budget was not enough to cover the costs of the event.
The 1996-97 GPSC budget of $62,000 is "not based on last year's budget," Taylor said. "It was based on the new mission of graduate students to take care of graduate concerns."
Communications Officer Gordon Zaft said the council is concerned with improving issues on child care and financial aid lobbying for graduate students.
"The structure has been put into place to function independently and to put new programs into place," Zaft said.
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