Graduate students at the University of Southern Maine are looking to create a student government of their own.

USM’s 1,700 graduate students are not represented by the current undergraduate student government. The closest thing grads have is the Muskie School Organization, a social network and platform for community involvement.

Will Walker, a member on the Muskie School Organization, said the group has been meeting since January to decide how to proceed.

USM is currently restructuring on a large scale, and one of the Graduate Student Government’s (GSG) roles would be to voice grad students’ interests to the administration during that process. They would also fund research and issue grants.

Walker also thinks the GSG will make MSO more efficient.

"For us, having a student government body we can look to represent the grad students at USM can take that off our hands and let us be more effective at the other things that MSO does, things that really only MSO can do," Walker said.

A large majority of grad students are interested in moving forward with the GSG.

In a 2005 survey of 550 USM graduate students, 77 percent of respondents said they had “significant interest in starting a graduate student government,” and 83 percent “[wanted] representation as graduate students,” according to MBA student David Holman, a member of the Muskie School Organization.

"Currently at USM there are more than five committees which are required to have a graduate student member, but can't find one because they don't know who to ask for representatives," Holman said. "This is another area where a GSG would contribute to USM. If graduate students served on committees at USM they would bring a lot of valuable experience into the discussion.”

Students expect it to be at least another year before they draft a constitution and by-laws, get them approved by the Board of Trustees, and run a student body referendum on a new student fee.

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