News flash: This week’s elections are for graduate students, too.

But while it is hard to miss the thousands of flyers undergraduate candidates have posted on every available inch of campus, the run-up to elections for the Graduate Student Council (GSC) has been noticeably less visible.

While a quick trip to the bathroom is all it takes to find out how plentiful candidates for the Undergraduate Senate are, GSC candidates are much fewer and farther between. In fact, a shortfall of graduate candidates threatened to leave the 15-person GSC without enough members for next year, until a last-minute push encouraged more students to run.

But that is not really all that unusual for graduate elections.

“The graduate student population has traditionally had challenges attracting student officers,” said current GSC co-chair Jenny Allen, who also writes for The Daily. “Last year, it was just enough people [to fill the council].”

Though a record number of graduate candidates signed up to run this year, several dropped out recently and very few have done substantial campaigning. And while every undergraduate running for Senate posted a profile on the elections web site, most graduate candidates did not.

There is also no candidate from the School of Education on the ballot, even though GSC by-laws require representation from each of the schools.

The trouble does not end there. Graduate students also vote in much fewer numbers than undergraduates, a phenomenon that some cite as giving undergraduates a disproportionate influence in deciding joint measures such as special fees. Though there are more graduate students than undergraduates on campus, undergraduates counted 60 percent more voters in last year’s elections.

Are graduate students just more apathetic when it comes to student government than their younger peers? Not necessarily, say students who are regularly involved with graduate student government.

“It’s not so much a lack of interest. Graduate students are interested in these things,” said fifth-year electrical engineering graduate student Tom Lee, a former GSC co-chair who has maintained involvement with the council for almost three years.

“But they have a lot of other things they are also interested in, like their family and their research,” he added. “When you’re trying to weigh your priorities, those things tend to float to the top.”

In fact, the further graduate students are in their academic program, the more time they must spend doing research and writing dissertations, leaving less time for involvement in student government. This explains why the GSC usually retains few incumbents, as older members nearing the end of their studies no longer have free time to commit. This year, for example, several representatives decided not to run again even though they will be on campus next year.

Unlike undergraduates, graduate students also often identify with their specific department or school more than with the graduate community as a whole, making student government a resource that few consider.

“There’s no one community of graduate students as there are for undergrads,” Lee said. “Your life is tied very much to the department or program you are in, and those things affect you more directly than things that might happen with the ASSU.”

There is one exception. Among those involved in graduate student government, there is a consensus about this year’s foremost campaign issue: health care. An ongoing and complicated saga that dates back several years, health care for graduate students and their dependents has become one of the few issues that transcends departments and schools and is perhaps the most pressing concern the GSC will face next year.

Not surprisingly, ASSU Executive candidates — all of whom are undergraduates — almost universally pay lip service to “health care” in hopes of attracting graduate votes. But often they lack detailed proposals beyond the initial suggestion, offering little more to voters than vague commitments.

“The feeling I get when I listen to these candidates is that they’ve just read the GSC web site,” Lee said. “GSC candidates are usually more substantial.”

All this can make the GSC a very different body than the Undergraduate Senate. Whereas most of the Senate’s work is conducted by elected representatives, those familiar with the graduate council’s mechanics say the GSC works more like a voluntary organization, often depending on unelected members to spearhead initiatives and programs.

“It’s both a blessing and a curse,” Lee said. “Yes, we have fewer people who are interested, but the people who we get are really committed. That’s [what makes] it very effective.”

In turning out the vote, the ASSU has adopted different strategies for undergraduates and graduates. Elections Commissioner Bernard Fraga ‘08 says that while the battle with undergraduate turnout is making students realize that individual votes count, the battle with graduate turnout is raising awareness that there are elections in the first place.

“A large percentage of the graduate population [doesn’t] know what the GSC does,” Fraga said. “But it still affects them quite a bit in terms of fees and how much they pay.”

Last year, there were complaints that the Elections Commission did not advertise sufficiently in the graduate parts of campus, and instead focused their flyering efforts in places visible mostly to undergraduates. To remedy this problem, the GSC allocated additional funds to the Commission this year for the expressed purpose of advertising more heavily to their constituents.

In order to encourage graduates to vote, the Commission made appearances at several recent graduate events, something they almost never do for undergraduates.

Fraga, however, expressed some frustration with graduate involvement in the elections process.

“It shouldn’t,” he said, “have to take people being scared that there are not going to be enough candidates to get people to run.”