Nineteen candidates are vying this year for the 15 positions on the Graduate Student Council, though a dearth of office seekers has left several schools with few or no candidates in this Wednesday’s election.

The main issues in this year’s election resemble the topics that are widely discussed each year, including affordable health care and housing, child care, parking and transportation issues, stipends, social interactions and overall quality of life. Additionally, academics have been discussed, including the need to promote more interdisciplinary exchanges among graduate students from different fields and more dialogue between students and administrators. Some candidates have also expressed concern that not enough people are paying attention to world affairs and the issues that affect international students.

The GSC is composed of 15 elected members. Ten of these are elected from and by students within each graduate school, while the remaining five are at-large representatives who are elected from and by the whole graduate student community. Candidates run from within their respective graduate school, and those with the highest amount of votes within the school are elected as the school’s representative. The remaining candidates with the highest number of votes are elected to the five at-large positions.

The purpose of this division, said outgoing GSC Chair Grace Chang, a medical student, is to ensure that students from each school have a voice without severely limiting the number of students who can participate from any one school.

The schools do have quotas of representative seats they must fill, but once they are filled, then the remaining at-large seats are open to all candidates. The School of Engineering has two guaranteed seats, the School of Humanities and Sciences has three, while the Schools of Business, Law, Medicine, Education and Earth Sciences each have one.

Running for these positions are 19 candidates — five from Engineering, six from Humanities and Sciences, three from the Business School, two from the Medical School, two from the School of Education and one from Earth Sciences. There are no candidates this year from the Law School.

Among this pool of candidates are two incumbents, Surya Singh, currently an Engineering representative, and Ying Wong, currently an at-large representative from Humanities and Sciences.

The GSC elections campaign is fairly modest, with the result being that many graduate students fail to take notice of them.

Alan Omand, a first-year graduate student in management science and engineering, remarked, “Actually, I don’t know that much about the grad student elections. I think I was e-mailed by my CA, but there have been no real posters or fliers around that I have noticed and really couldn’t tell you one person who is running to save my life.”

Once the 15 representatives are elected, they participate in an internal election to select the officer positions of chair, deputy chair, financial officer and Funding Committee chair. No current officers are running for reelection.