Representing EALL Graduate Students

In a nutshell, the job of the EALL grad student representatives is to represent the interests of students in our department to the department itself and to external organizations like the GSO. Specifically, these duties include:

  • Attending Graduate Student Organization (GSO) meetings as EALL representatives and raising relevant issues and concerns on behalf of EALL's students
  • Attending EALL Advisory Committee (AC) meetings as student representatives and raising relevant issues and concerns on behalf of the students
  • Being present at student orientation meetings at the beginning of each semester, sometimes giving a short welcome speech
  • Holding welcome meetings (read: pizza parties) for new students at the beginning of each semester
  • Running elections for the next set of EALL student representatives in late March or early April

GSO

The GSO “represents the academic interests of over 5,000 graduate students attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa... The GSO provides input on all issues affecting University of Hawaii graduate students and the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. It has representatives seating on over 40 university committees and participates in a wide variety of graduate student, campus, and community events.” (from the GSO website).

In addition to providing representation, the GSO also has a substantial budget for travel and research grants to graduate students. This grant budget an important resource if you want to go to a conference on the mainland but find yourself short on funds!

Every department is allowed to specify one representative and one alternate representative to the GSO. One of these two is responsible for attending the GSO's monthly meetings to discuss relevant GSO business and to review grant applications. The EALL representative (or alternate representative) to the GSO has the right engage in debate on issues affecting our department and to cast a vote in all formal votes. The representative is also instrumental in reviewing grant applications submitted by students from EALL. If our representative does not attend, our applications do not get reviewed!

AC

The AC is a body internal to EALL made up of EALL faculty members plus one student representative. The AC meets once or twice a month for about an hour and a half to discuss department business, depending on the amount or urgency of that business. The student representative is responsible for attending the meeting, providing input from the students' point of view, and notifying the EALL student body of issues which may have a serious effect on them. (the AC minutes are distributed to the entire department after they are approved, however, it is suggested that the representative point out items of real interest since many people may not take the time to read attachments).

Previous generations of EALL students fought hard for the privilege of sending a representative to these meetings. We should take full advantage of the opportunities they won for us.

Ensuring Equality of Representation

EALL consists of three sections, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. In the past, we had only one representative for the whole department, which sometimes led to complaints regarding equal representation of the three sections. To help address this issue, we now elect three representatives, one from each section.

After the representatives are elected by their respective sections, they decide among themselves how to split up the responsibilities listed above. For the past two years, the representatives have designated one person to attend GSO meetings and one person to attend AC meetings, with the third person helping to coordinate events and serving an alternate for the other two. With a generous portion of respect and cooperative spirit, this system has served us very well. We hope future representatives can also work together for the good of all EALL Graduate students.

Election Procedure for the 2009-2010 Academic Year

Election procedures for the coming year will be very similar to last year's elections. First we will have a two-week nomination period lasting until Friday, April 24th. If you would like to nominate someone to represent your section, please e-mail your nomination to Jessica Greenfield (jameremo@googlemail.com). Jessica will notify the nominees and confirm their acceptance or rejection of the nomination.

Elections will be opened on Monday, April 27th and will last until Sunday, May 2nd. Like last year, they will be held online using the LimeSurvey survey system, which allows each person to vote only once and preserves anonymity. In order to vote, you must have a valid e-mail address. This e-mail address will be used to e-mail you a link through which you can vote. The survey service will be configured to use the e-mail addresses in our current mass mailing list (eallgrads-hawaii-l@hawaii.edu). If you do not regularly receive e-mails sent to this list, or if you would like the voting service to use a different e-mail address, please e-mail Jessica Greenfield.

The election results will be announced Monday, May 3rd.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!