President-elect Amir Gilmore shared his final words as the vice president of the Graduate and Professional Student Association and bestowed a gavel to Vice President-elect David Silva at the year’s last GPSA Senate meeting on Monday.

“It’s a privilege to give this position to David,” Gilmore said, adding that he is looking forward to their year in office together.

At the meeting, three candidates were appointed to next year’s Senate as college representatives. One of the candidates is graduate assistant Veneice Guillory-Lacy, who will be a representative for the College of Education. She said she hopes to promote representation and voice within the Senate.

“I want representation, meaning women of color,” Guillory-Lacy said, “visibility of the College [of Education], and also visibility and representation of mothers.”

A mother of three children, Guillory-Lacy worried about the impact of possible budget or spending cuts at the WSU Children’s Center. She said a lack of on-campus resources would negatively affect her kids.

“As a graduate student only having an assistantship,” she said, “my assistantship money would not be able to pay for my 3-year-old son to actually go to a great school.”

She said she immediately reached out to GPSA. Carolina Silva, GPSA senator for the Department of Teaching and Learning, brought her concern to Washington Sen. Patty Murray, who is a ranking member on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Murray is the main sponsor of a bill that would increase the number of families eligible for government-assisted childcare and provide more money to fund personnel in childcare facilities.

“They heard my voice, they heard my concern, took it and made something happen,” Guillory-Lacy said.

Mathematics doctoral student Ralph Chikhany will be a representative for the College of Arts and Sciences. Chikhany said he wants to focus on visibility of international and LGBTQ students.

He said he thinks it would be good to work with the Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center and Graduate Pride Alliance at WSU to increase visibility and take on LGBTQ issues.

“We live in a small town,” Chikhany said. “Not everyone is comfortable talking about this.”

The Senate approved the revised S&A budget, as well as the fall 2018 programming allocations.

Outgoing GPSA President Shane Reynolds finished the meeting by listing accomplishments of the past year, such as avoiding stipend cuts for graduate and professional students in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture.

“I really appreciate those efforts,” Reynolds said. “Go us!”