Members of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly emphasized the need to increase student engagement ahead of April elections during GPSA’s Monday meeting.
The elections, which take place every spring semester, mark a large transition for GPSA, which represents over 10,000 graduate and professional students across Cornell’s campuses. With nearly all of its executive roles opening up, GPSA members shared how low awareness and participation could limit how effectively GPSA reflects student interests.
“Elections are not just for the exec[utive] board positions, but also for all of the voting member positions as well,” said Anafernanda Cardenas M.A. ’26, GPSA executive vice president, during the meeting. “It’s a great time to get involved.”
The upcoming elections will fill nearly all executive roles, such as president, executive vice president and vice president of finance. A range of voting member positions representing graduate programs across the University will also be elected. These representatives help allocate funding, advocate for student concerns and shape graduate student policy.
Candidates must register from April 6-13. They then have from April 14-20 to collect signatures. A town hall for executive candidates is scheduled for April 21, and results will be announced on April 27, according to Cardenas. An official timeline for the election has not yet been published online.
To address historically low participation, the elections committee plans to scale back information sessions and shift toward more targeted outreach.
“We’re going to [make information sessions] a little smaller,” Cardenas said, citing low attendance during the previous election cycle.
GPSA Vice President of Finance Siim Sepp, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, asked Cardenas if she was going to take any “extraordinary measures” to “increase graduate engagement and voting numbers, because they haven’t been super high.”
“I personally am presenting to my school [before] the election,” Cardenas said. She also encouraged current assembly members to spread awareness about the GPSA.
Past election data also shows persistent challenges with student engagement. In the May 2024 GPSA elections, voters represented approximately 6% of the over 10,000 graduate and professional students enrolled at the time. Data is not available for the 2025 election. .
GPSA President Nicholas Brennan, a Ph.D. candidate in physics, said broader awareness remains a key challenge, particularly in relation to other graduate student organizations on campus.
“I don’t know how much undergrads –– or grads –– know about GPSA, but we represent masters, Ph.Ds, people at Cornell Tech … and we look at them irrespective of whether or not they’re workers,” Brennan said during an interview with The Sun.
The conversation also reflects broader questions about graduate student representation, especially following the formation of the Cornell Graduate Students United labor union in 2023, which represents graduate workers at Cornell.
While both groups advocate for graduate students, Brennan emphasized that the assembly represents all graduate and professional students, not just those employed by the University.
Brennan said GPSA’s work often goes unnoticed, despite its role in representing all of the graduate and professional students across the University.
“This isn’t a story that happens in a [single] meeting,” he said. “It’s something that we really feel like hasn’t gotten … any notice.”
Brennan agreed with other representatives that GPSA’s lack of visibility has contributed to low engagement in elections and events, and he said that is a challenge the upcoming election cycle is intended to address.
“An overall mission for all of us [is] to make sure that our GPSA has as many people [as possible] from different diverse backgrounds,” Cardenas said.
