YOUR VIEWS Letters to the Editor

Voter turnout misrepresented

[Editor’s Note: This letter responds to the Oct. 1 article on the Graduate Student Senate election results.]

As an INTA graduate senator, I feel compelled to tell you that I was astounded that [the article] relied on mere raw numbers to decide which academic department received the most and the least votes. I find that method to be highly flawed.

The article mentioned that the Chemistry senator got the highest votes, though she got only 34 votes out of 220 Graduates students enrolled in the Chemistry department. In essence, she received only 16 percent of the total possible votes.

By merely looking at the raw numbers, your method results in a highly skewed and flawed output.

There are graduate departments, like the INTA department, that are striving to get involved in the graduate student body. Although I got only 18 votes, there are only 52 Graduate INTA students enrolled, giving me about 35 percent of the total possible votes.

Even my opponent, who got 10 votes, did better than the Chemistry senator by grabbing 19 percent of the total possible votes. In addition, the voter turnout in my department was about 53 percent, which I would argue was one of the highest voter turnouts.

I felt that the article completely sidelines the efforts made by a few departments on our campus that try their best to get their graduate students involved in on-campus activities. Not to mention, it sends out a completely wrong message that graduate students are generally not interested in getting involved.