The Graduate Professional Student Council elected Matt Ryg as its president Tuesday evening.

Ryg, current vice president of Administrative Affairs, defeated Patrick Hunn and Amanda Barnard.

“I speak collectively as a group, inside the university and to the surrounding community,” Ryg said. “I think that my experience with GPSC so far lends itself to that.”

Advertisement

Vice president of administrative affairs nominees were Hunn and Barnard. The majority vote went to Hunn.

Barnard was elected vice president of the graduate affairs committee, defeating Ryan Ceresola, Mike Levy and Andrew Gillespy. The election required three rounds of voting.

The graduate student council representatives were chosen from Ceresola, Justin Simpson, Natalie Nash, Jeremiah Unkefer, Kevin Taylor, Derek Lehman, and Amber Gregory. Nash, Unkefer, Taylor, and Gregory were the four representatives chosen.

Before the meeting, Anne Moore, an administrator from the Morris Library told the GPSC about the graduate research available for them online and how they can help make more research available.

During the meeting, they discussed the Student Health Advisory Board’s recommendation to the university to include a Good Samaritan Alcohol Amnesty policy.

The policy would be an encouragement for students to call for help when another student needs medical attention while intoxicated. The “Good Samaritan” would be offered amnesty against university disciplinary actions if he or she stayed with the other student and fully cooperated with the emergency personnel.

“Whether or not we even are affected by this as graduate students, we might as well (vote for this), because if we vote for this, we will be helping people,” John Stewart, vice president of graduate school affairs, said. “It’s still a matter of principle.”

Advertisement*

Another topic of interest was a proposal to allow some degrees to be obtained entirely online.

While some of the members present believed the program would be compared to University of Phoenix and would not be a provide students with a full education, others said they thought an online degree would allow for more people to be able to obtain a degree while taking care of a family and, or a job.

The last meeting of the school year was concluded by Blaine Tisdale, president of GPSC.

“I would like to thank everyone for being a part of this organization,” Tisdale said. “I will always be indebted to those here.”