The Graduate and Professional Student Council has elected its new leaders for next year.
Felicia Hawthorne, current GPSC vice president, will serve as president of the student group. At its meeting Tuesday night, the GPSC general assembly elected the fourth-year doctoral candidate in genetics and genomics to head the body, which aims to represent the interests of students in Duke’s nine graduate and professional schools.
“I am very excited—I have been thinking about this a lot,” Hawthorne, who ran for the position last year, said after the meeting. “I learned a lot being VP this year. I learned about the interactions of GPSC.”
Hawthorne defeated Yuvon Mobley, a Board of Trustees academic affairs committee representative and former GPSC vice president. Each candidate gave a brief speech and fielded questions from general assembly members.
Few students ran for other positions on the executive board, resulting in only one other contested race.
In her platform, Hawthorne, who previously served as co-chair on the GPSC Basketball Committee, emphasized improving campus safety, advocating for mental health services, establishing a graduate student center and expanding communication between GPSC and the graduate student body.
Safety was one of the president-elect’s priorities, especially in light of recent robberies on or near campus. A graduate student was robbed as he walked to his car on Circuit Drive March 11, and another graduate student was robbed at gunpoint near East Campus Jan. 19. Hawthorne said she would work to improve on- and off-campus safety.
“I think that we would really need to press for an active increase in presence in these areas and for [the Duke University Police Department] to work more closely with the Durham police,” she said at the meeting. “We have had graduate students really eliminated from on-campus housing, and we have more students living off campus and we have a lot of graduate students without cars.”
Hawthorne added that the University should allow students to move their cars closer to main buildings on campus late at night and increase lighting to address safety issues.
She also spoke of the need to push for a graduate student center, though she noted that doing so may be difficult. The University’s recent $80 million donation from the Duke Endowment to improve select campus buildings may make her goal more feasible, she noted.
GPSC also needs to do a better job advertising the group’s campus services when students first arrive, Hawthorne added.
“They will see that there is reason to actually pay attention and to know that there are services here,” she said. “I think it’s more difficult to draw people in who have been here for a few years.”
Although two people ran for the position of president, few students pursued other positions on the executive board. Many GPSC representatives declined nominations throughout the second half of the meeting.
Allison Schmitt, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in chemistry and current co-chair of the Basketball Committee, edged out Duke law student Amanda Pooler for the role of attorney general.
The races for vice president, treasurer, executive secretary and academic officer were uncontested.
Bill Hunt, a third-year graduate student in the English department, was elected vice president; Philip Weissman, a law student, was elected treasurer; Stacey Turner, a second-year Ph.D. candidate in chemistry, was elected secretary; and Bethany Stafford, a first-year doctoral candidate in psychology, was elected academic officer.
Hawthorne said the lack of interest and competition in many of the positions is “definitely an issue of concern” that she thinks increased marketing might be able to solve. She added that many students have a lot of work this time of the year and that some graduate students are just returning from two-week breaks, which may have contributed to the lack of interest.
“I think we need to increase our advertising of the positions,” she said after the meeting. “I am hopeful that there will be more interest for the rest of the positions.”
GPSC will elect student life co-chairs, communications coordinator, University affairs coordinator, student group liaison, community outreach coordinator and career development chair at its next meeting March 29.
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