Garnering an equal voice for graduate students at Binghamton University is one of the top priorities for BU’s Graduate Student Organization, according to Jessie Kapasula, its president.

Undergraduate students outnumber graduate students at Binghamton University 11,515-to-2,920, according to BU’s Web site. That disparity serves to hide the community that Kapasula said teaches about 40 percent of classes at BU.

“Our stand definitely is that we could use more visibility,” Kapasula said. “We do feel we’re not taken seriously.”

Kapasula is the leader of a new executive board for the 2008-09 school year. A doctoral student in comparative literature, Kapasula was born in Malawi, located in southern Africa and, after leaving the country for several years, returned to attend Chancellor College at the University of Malawi.

That experience, and a dislike for apathy, are what Kapasula said motivated her to run for president last spring.

“I dislike people who simply complain,” she said. “I thought, maybe if I become part of the process … ”

According to Kapasula, this year’s e-board has already affected positive change; publications of the GSO, including its constitution, have been updated and distributed, and a successful forum on women and the U.S. Constitution was held. The organization’s Web site has also been redesigned.

But the GSO strives above all, she said, to represent its constituents’ views and not the agenda of its executives.

“I hate executive arrogance,” Kapasula said. “I hate leaders who get into a post and they end up mistaking the office they are holding as a vehicle for their own personal opinions.”

Having those opinions heard, however, is the GSO’s toughest task, she added.

The Student Association, which represents Binghamton’s undergrad community, and the GSO have had disagreements regarding the future of Off Campus College Transport, which controls BU’s student-run bus service and was in danger of a shutdown because of financial issues. The GSO’s financial contributions to OCCT are less than the SA’s.

“What we are saying is that graduate students might be fewer in numbers, but the position that they occupy is very central to the success of this University,” Kapasula said. “That argument, it’s based on people who think that when you’ve got more money, you’ve got better rights than someone without.”

SA President Matt Landau said he believes the GSO’s desire to be on equal footing is unreasonable.

“They feel as if they are entitled to equal treatment with equal representation on all issues, even though the ratio is clearly 90-10,” Landau said.

Kapasula said the University, too, has not taken the organization as seriously as it should. According to Kapasula, the tuition payment plan changed at the start of the semester, but the GSO was not consulted.

Brian Rose, BU’s vice president for Student Affairs, said that his office listens to the GSO’s concerns as frequently and considers them as seriously as the SA’s.

“The GSO brings issues to me and I try to take those issues if they’re issues I can address myself, or I simply try to match them with the right administrators,” Rose said. “They have the same access to me that anybody else would.”

There remains for Kapasula, however, a fundamental divide between the GSO’s thinking and the University’s as a whole.

“The most important thing that people need to understand is that at a University, it’s built on tenets that value the major players that make up what we call an educational system,” she said. “But when issues come up, our representation is unequal and it’s voiceless, and that’s very handicapping.”