On Monday, WSU’s Graduate and Professional Student Association voted to censure WSU Pullman’s administration due to concerns over parking for the Thursday night football game.

Senators invited officers of the biology graduate students association Haley Schrader, Kuenzang Om and Jacob Green to discuss some of the recent issues related to transportation.

Schrader said students have labs at night from 7 pm – 10 pm and need to check on plants, experiments and animals. These can be time sensitive operations and the timing of the football games impacts parking lots near the labs.

Solutions provided by transportation services are unfeasible. The bus service no longer covers certain students’ housing routes after 6 pm and designated parking lots provide safety concerns for students.

Green said often graduate students have to pay for parking on Saturday games and the lack of parking and expense during Saturdays create difficulties in performing required labs.

Edgerton said GPSA offered to pay for spaces but this action was denied by the WSU administration. She recommended a censure of the administration as a response.

Senator Madison Honig asked if the wording of “Pullman Administration” was meant to be purposely vague or if there were any individuals the censure was aimed towards specifically. Edgerton said she thought that term would cover all of the administration.

The senators heard from a guest speaker, and student regent Reanne Cunningham Chilton. Chilton previously served as GPSA president from 2021-2022.

Chilton said she came to discuss the Board of Regents. As student regent, Chiltson said her biggest priorities are to properly represent every student to the board of regents and to look for opportunities to support student mental health and basic needs.

Afterwards, representatives of the WSU Coalition of Academic Student Employees gave a presentation.

Claudia Skinner said the main purposes of this presentation were to introduce WSU CASE and what has happened so far with the union certification process. Luke Schefke said CASE is a student-led organization across all the WSU systems with the goal of forming a union for academic student employees to improve working conditions.

Yiran Guo said the union covers both national and international students. He said there have been no academic union members who have ever reported any complications arising from being both an International ASE and a unionized employee.

Dano said the union certification reached majority support and the state labor board has confirmed the majority. The last step in the union certification is for WSU Labor relations to submit remaining signatures for all ASE’s.

As of today, WSU has submitted signatures for approximately 85% of all ASE’s. Skinner said. Once they are certified they will begin the bargaining process with WSU. A survey meant to identify the most important issues is currently available on CASE’s website.

Senator Abodh Poudyal asked if having a new provost to deal with the same problem makes a difference in the process. Skinner said regardless of who the WSU leadership is, they have staff continuously working on the issue and it has not had an impact on the process.

The senators then moved on to new business. Senator Rabayet Sadnan said they have received five applications for new senators. The senators voted to approve the new senators’ applications.

Aly closed the discussion and left the motion to a vote by the senators. The motion was passed by the senators.

After that, the senators heard committee updates. Senator Ajay Barman said the top priorities for the legislative affairs committee are tuition waivers for Indigenous students, affordable childcare, affordable housing and compensation for undocumented student workers.

Senator Magdana Kondaridze of the programming committee said there is a Halloween Costume Contest coming up on Oct. 27, as well as a restaurant event at Paradise Creek on Friday Nov. 4

Awards and scholarship chair, Senator Tathagata Pal said the deadline for the visitation grant is April 1, 2023. Senator Sam Jayasinghe of the grant committee said applications are now open for the fall application period. The applications close on Nov. 2.