New Student Government Referendum Passes Easily

UCSF students have approved a referendum to change the student government structure by an overwhelming margin of 88 percent to 12 percent.

Sponsored by Associated Students of UCSF (ASUC) and Graduate Students’ Association (GSA), the referendum proposed the merger of the two campus-wide student governments into a single entity, unifying dental, graduate, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and physical therapy students under one identifiable banner. The new entity would be called the Graduate and Professional Students’ Association (GPSA).

Approximately 30 percent of the overall UCSF student population participated in the referendum, which was held in an online vote from January 21-28.

Graduate and physical therapy students voting in the referendum also overwhelmingly approved the formation of student governments to respectively address their needs, which was formerly handled previously by GSA.

Approval of the referendum allows work to proceed with the official dissolution of ASUC and GSA and plan for campus-wide elections in April 2014 to elect the five executive council officers of the GPSA Executive Board. Officers of the academic council of the GPSA Executive Board will be appointed by the respective academic governments.

More information about GPSA and the next steps related to the transition to GPSA from ASUC and GSA can be found at gpsa.ucsf.edu.