The Graduate and Professional Student Council members said they would like to see a change in the admission process, which might benefit enrollment figures for graduate students.

The GPSC met for its first meeting of the semester Tuesday night, where memberes discussed issues that relate to the council’s constitution and overall graduate student enrollment.

Although final enrollment numbers will not be released until the university’s 10-day enrollment report next week, the council had an estimated figure to report.

Brooke Talley, vice president for graduate school affairs, said enrollment is about the same this year, but the yield

average is down.

The yield average is a measure of how many students are accepted to any college program versus how many actually enroll.

Talley said the graduate program’s yield is 40 percent, which is a drop from the 56 percent average in recent semesters.

Talley also said changes are being made to the

enrollment process.

“One thing that slows down the admissions process is all these hoops that people have to jump through,” she said.

In order to speed up the admissions process, the graduate school proposed to admit students without official transcripts,

Talley said.

However, the school would require official transcripts before graduation.

The council also appointed members to committees, including the fee allocation board.

The allocation board is in charge of the GPSC budget, said Peter Lucas, vice president for administrative affairs.

Meetings oftentimes run past their scheduled times because of funding proposals from organizations, and the council wants to be able to trust a committee to do the background work on a proposal so only the essentials need to be discussed at the meeting, Lucas said.

He said he also wanted to know what people think the council’s vision should be.

“Some feel that we should be more community service oriented,” Lucas said. “Some feel that we should be strictly graduate professional student oriented. That’s something I’m curious about.”

In other new business,  Blaine Tisdale, president, said he wants to set up a committee to review the group’s constitution.

He said the document has some peculiar demands and errors in it that don’t quite make sense.

One issue brought up by the constitution is that the rule requires the council to hold meetings every other week of the semester starting the second week.

This year, the semester’s eigth week falls during the university’s fall break, so Tisdale said the group must decide on an alternative.

On top of constitution amendments and committee appointments, building repairs were covered in roundtable discussions.

One council member said he was stuck in an elevator at Faner Hall earlier this semester, and that particular elevator has gone out twice already during

the fall semester.

The student said the university usually fixes the elevator quickly, but he was concerned about the elevator breaking down on nights and weekends, which is the typical time when graduate students work, and crews may not be able to respond as quickly.

Social media was also a topic of discussion at the meeting. The goal is to make everything GPSC-related open to the public,

Lucas said.

However, the group must use the university WordPress website and cannot make its own, he said.

“The university is all about branding right now, and every website needs to look the same,” Lucas said.

The group’s next meeting will be 7 p.m. Sept. 11 in Lawson Hall 0231.