In the last meeting of the 2022-23 Graduate Student Council (GSC), members of the GSC went over the council’s final funding requests before the new 2023-24 GSC was sworn in at Tuesday’s meeting.

Newly-elected Associated Students at Stanford University (ASSU) co-president Kyle Haslett ’25 facilitated the swearing-in ceremony of the new councilors. During the ceremony, the members repeated after Haslett their oath of office.

The new members of the 23-24 GSC include:

• Pranav Jain – Graduate School of Business (MBA) and School of Engineering (Masters in Computer Science)
• Fatima Karim – Doerr School (first-year MS – Sustainability, Science & Practice)
• Kristen Jackson – School of Education (third-year PhD – RILE)
• Guillem Megias Homar – School of Engineering (third-year Ph.D. – Aero-Astro)
• Kavya Sreedhar – School of Engineering (fourth-year Ph.D.- Electrical Engineering)
• Kay Barrett – School of Humanities and Sciences, Humanities (first-year PhD – English)
• Tom Liu – School of Humanities and Sciences, Natural Sciences (third-year PhD – Physics)
• Jacob Randolph – Law School (second-year JD-MA – Education)
• Kwamina Nyame – Medical School (third-year Ph.D. – Biochemistry)
• Liz Park – at-large, School of Humanities and Sciences, Natural Sciences (third-year Ph.D. – Chemistry)
• Leslie Luqueño – at-large, School of Education (third-year Ph.D. – Sociology of Education)
• Habeeb Ayantayo – at large, School of Engineering (first-year MS – Electrical Engineering)
• Emmit Pert – at-large, School of Humanities and Sciences, Natural Sciences (third-year Ph.D. – Chemistry)
• Jacob Benford – at-large, Law School (second-year JD)

Emily Schell, outgoing co-chair of the 22-23 GSC and a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Education, reflected on her time with the 22-23 GSC and gave advice to the incoming 23-24 GSC.

“Shared governance requires compromise and collaboration of every stakeholder involved,” Schell said. “You have more power in the body, and the biggest piece of power is our platform.”

Schell’s outgoing co-chair, Jason Anderson, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in electrical engineering, also shared advice on being a student advocate.

“I say take risks on what you plan to do. Like how we fought our way and we made sure every faculty Senator understood the affordability crisis we’re having,” Anderson said.

In the 2023-24 GSC’s first few orders of business, they voted to confirm Fatima Karim M.S. ’24 as a new council member to represent the graduate students of the Doerr School of Sustainability.

Elizabeth Park, third-year chemistry Ph.D. student, and Kristen Jackson, a third-year Ph.D. student in the School of Education, were elected chairs of the new council. Park previously served as the GSC secretary and Jackson as a council member.

In a statement to The Daily, Park and Jackson wrote that their goals for the 2023-24 year would include putting their constituents first, focusing on campus advocacy and institutional connections.

With the graduate worker union election scheduled to begin next week, determining whether graduate student workers will be represented by the Stanford Graduate Workers Union, Park and Jackson wrote that they would “support the union [and] students not in union writ large.”

Jackson and Park added that, to increase student representation and advocacy, they would engage in a “listening tour” at all of Stanford’s cultural centers to get feedback on “how we can better support the various groups they represent.”

The co-chairs’ additional stated areas of focus are sexual violence prevention, VSO funding, housing and dining, transportation, mental health provisions, FLI grad students, DisCo, international students and students with families.

This article has been corrected to reflect that Jain is also a member of the School of Engineering. The Daily regrets this error.