The Graduate Student Council discussed upcoming GSC officer elections and the new graduate student wildcat, which was unveiled March 1 at the basketball game, when it met Tuesday night for its biweekly meeting.
Bounds said the wildcat committee received 550 votes, but 330 of them could not be considered because they were ballot-stuffing votes. Most of the unusable ballots appeared to be submitted by former students or those unable to confirm their affiliation with the University, she said. The ballots’ validity were confirmed by tracing IP addresses.
Bounds said conducting the survey through qualtrics.com didn’t allow a way to prevent the ballot-stuffing by requiring voters to sign in with the A&M system, but that the wildcat committee was able to get rid of these votes before considering a winner.
Bounds said the majority of the 220 valid graduate student votes went to Travis Keiser’s video.
The new graduate wildcat will be similar to the senior wildcat but will exclude any “A” before whooping. Bounds took a vote on the GSC’s interest in attempting to incorporate the new wildcat into the traditional wildcat story.
Bounds said the GSC is seeking ways to bridge the gap between graduate students and undergraduate students at A&M and that being a part of the wildcat tradition is a great start.
The next meeting will take place on March 18 in Koldus 144 and will be a question-and-answer session between students running for GSC officials and GSC delegates.