In May 1993, GPSC became a legislative branch of ASUA. GPSC's new President, Thomas Cooley (now representing Optical Science) and Vice President, Mitzi Forbes (Nursing) had both been members of the negotiation team which had created the new student government structure. In addition the new ASUA President, Derek Lewis, and the Vice President for Programs and Services, Kristin Major, had also been members of the team, so it was hoped that the transition year would be smooth. It was not.

Elections for the 1993-94 ASUA had included GPSC reps, and immediately it became apparent that ASUA would have major troubles structuring elections which would meet the needs of graduate students. GPSC elections the year before had been held at the department level, and the ballot return had been good. Left to the ASUA Elections Commission, information about available GPSC seats was disseminated only in the Arizona Daily Wildcat.. With the new ASUA elections process, students could not vote in their departments, but had to vote in centralized polling places for each constituent unit. These polling places were often closed due to lack of poll workers during the elections hours. The number of recorded votes was much lower than the previous year, and this fact was used to attempt to discredit the representativeness of GPSC. At the first joint meeting of the incoming Undergraduate Senate and GPSC each new legislator introduced her/himself. At this time many humorous incidents were related in which a GPSC candidate had been misinformed by the ASUA elections workers where her or his constituency was to vote, and so no one who went to vote for him/her could vote. Many of the new reps had not even been able to vote for themselves.

When the new constitution had been accepted in Spring semester of 1993, there was an agreement between the ASUA and GPSC that once both groups had approved the constitution, there would be no changes made until the new structure was implemented. This would prevent the 1992-93 ASUA Senate from making changes to the structure after GPSC had accepted it. All changes had to wait for the 1993-94 ASUA to take office, so that GPSC would have a voice in the changes. However, when the new constitution was passed out to the 93-94 ASUA a problem became immediately apparent. It is true that the constitution had not been changed but bylaws, which had not been agreed to by GPSC had been added by the 1992-93 ASUA Senate in the final Senate meeting (which lasted six hours). Many of these bylaws imposed changes which the GPSC negotiation team interpreted as direct violations of the agreements in principle which had been reached during negotiations. Bill =46isher , one of the new Undergraduate Senators, and GPSC Vice-President Mitzi Forbes began a process which would ultimately take 2 years to amend the bylaws to reflect the agreements which had been reached during negotiations. The team which was established to address these issues eventually became a standing committee of the legislative branch, known as the Joint Legislative Committee (or JLC), through which all constitution and bylaw amendments were to pass.

The first agreement which had been reached by the negotiation team had been the budget process. Agreements on the appointment process and legislative process quickly followed because they were very similar. The issue which was most difficult to agree on was the structure and role of the Central Governing Council (CGC). ASUA's representatives had envisioned it being a powerful body through which the ASUA President would govern ASUA. The GPSC representatives had envisioned it as a relatively weak body which existed to coordinate among the various units of ASUA. Immediately after inauguration, conflicts arose between the ASUA executive branch and the ASUA legislative branch over control of ASUA. The Undergraduate Senate and the GPSC objected to the political nature of some of the appointments made by the ASUA President and the Vice President for Clubs and Organizations. After a lengthy joint meeting, complete with temper tantrums and tears, a few of the appointments failed to pass GPSC and had to be referred to the CGC. In an effort to get the contested appointments confirmed, ASUA President Derek Lewis failed to call any CGC meetings for several weeks and allowed the contested appointees to serve in their appointments. Then he failed to put the issue on the CGC agendas so no votes could be taken. He claimed that GPSC had not properly notified ASUA that they had voted against the appointments (even though he had been present during the meeting in which the appointments were not confirmed). He even purposely failed to post CGC meeting agendas twenty four hours in advance so that the meeting could not be held without violating Arizona Open Meeting Law. He eventually ruled that absentee votes would be counted on this issue, even though ASUA has no provision for absentee balloting in its constitution. In the end, one of the contested appointments was confirmed and two were overturned, but not before the legislative bodies got a good taste of the political games which were to become a common part of doing business in ASUA.

In November of 1993, allegations surfaced that there had been serious misappropriation of funds within Clubs and Organizations. ASUA President Derek Lewis refused to take action to investigate the allegations, so GPSC passed a resolution empowering a committee, lead by Dan McGee to investigate. By December 7th the investigation had been completed and Dan presented his report to GPSC. Although Dan's investigation had confirmed the allegations against the VP for Clubs and Organizations and had also uncovered action taken to cover up the incident by the ASUA President (which included efforts to intimidate his own cabinet), and although the actions uncovered were impeachable offenses, GPSC chose to only pass a resolution of censure against both officers.

In mid-January there was a move by three ASUA legislators (Jon Shoemaker, Brad Milligan and Wendy Anderson) to return ASUA to a unicameral government and remove GPSC as a legislative body of ASUA by using petitions signed by students on campus. At this time, GPSC plans for leaving ASUA first began to be formulated, which would include taking approximately 23% of ASUA's budget (grads students comprise 23% of the student body) and forming a separate student government for grad students. Efforts to fight the unicameral proposal and prepare to leave ASUA if necessary were lead by Tom Cooley, Dan McGee and Mitzi Forbes. The issue was finally settled before the ASUA Supreme Court which ruled the referendum petition signatures which had been collected by Brad, Jon and Wendy were invalid because they had been collected under false pretenses.

Student Showcase:

During the summer, Cynthia Lunine (Agriculture) informed GPSC that she did not have the time to continue as the director of the Showcase. GPSC appointed Ron Dickinson (BPA) and Bill Bottke (Science), both serving their second term on GPSC, as director and assistant director of the Student Showcase, and allocated funds to hire work study students to staff Showcase. Building on the initial plans of Cynthia Lunine's committees, Ron and Bill began to work on the first Student Showcase. The plans met with a great deal of skepticism on the part of ASUA and some UA administrators, who did not believe that GPSC could pull off such an ambitious project. It was not until Steven Dvorak (ECE) and Jeffrey Warburton (Theatre), faculty serving on CGC, spoke enthusiastically about the Student Showcase did ASUA take the project seriously. On Homecoming day of 1993 the first Student Showcase occurred on the U of A mall. Although this initial Showcase was relatively small (with only about 100 participants), the quality was impressive, and UA administrators took note of its potential for future years. Ron and Bill's hard work and dedication earned them the first GPSC Representative of the Year Award.

TA Bookstore Discount:

For a month and a half during the late summer, GPSC President, Tom Cooley, took a leave of absence. During his absence GPSC began receiving complaints that the ASUA Bookstore was eliminating the 10% discount for GA's at the end of the fall semester. The GPSC Vice President contacted the Wildcat, and began to meet with ASUA Bookstore Director, Frank Farias; Vice President for Student Affairs, Saundra Taylor; and the Dean of Students, Melissa Vito protesting the elimination. GPSC also worked with the Graduate College and Michael Cusanovich, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies to protest the elimination in President Pacheco's Cabinet. In the end, Frank was directed to continue the discounts.

NAGPS:

In this time period, the Mountain Region Coordinator for the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) contacted GPSC and suggested that the UA submit a proposal to host the National NAGPS Conference in Tucson in October of 1994. After returning from his leave of absence, Tom wrote the proposal, which was accepted by the NAGPS Board of Directors in Januaryresulted in a resolution on the issue passed unanimously by the conference. NAGPS Legislative and Employment Concerns Coordinator, Gina Pearson, invited Mitzi to come to Washington, DC and lobby for graduate student concerns under health reform on Capitol Hill. While attending the National NAGPS Conference, both Tom and Mitzi became members of the NAGPS Board of Directors. Tom as the Nationn the U of A campus was the lack of child care. Graduate students had long been concerned that adequate child care be provided, and GPSC got Dorothy "Dot" Roome (Fine Arts) appointed to the UA Commission on the Status of Women in order to address this issue. Dot visited childcare facilities and investigated ways in which other campuses provide childcare. A subcommittee of the Commission worked through the summer and fall to study the issue and make recommendations. In January 1994 the committee presented its report and recommendations to the Provost. There was no action on the committee's recommendations, and on April 6, 1994 GPSC passed a strongly worded resolution requiring the University to respond to the recommendations by hiring a full-time director for child care and provide a budget which would allow the director to operate. The resolution was hand delivered to Dr. Martha Gilliland, Vice Provost, and Dr. Saundra Taylor, VP for Student Affairs. In response a search committee, including Dot, was formed and a full-time director for child care was hired.

Travel Grants:

During the 1992-93 academic year, the Graduate and Professional Student Travel Grant Fund had been through three quarterly award cycles. Difficulties in the process became apparent, and the new GPSC Chair of the Committee, Jennifer Ellis (Humanities) worked all year to make the process flow more smoothly. Half way into the year, David Lane (Non-Degree Seeking) joined the committee to help Jennifer computerize the award process as much as possible, and ease the strain on the Committee Chair.

State Politics, Tuition, and the beginnings of TAB:

The Health Committee continued to gather data on the study of student vulnerability through the fall semester. After attending the NAGPS Regional Conference in October, 1993, GPSC Treasurer, Thomas Sisson (Science); and GPSC Vice President and Health Committee Chair, Mitzi Forbes brought back ideas used by the Graduate and Professional Student Senates at University of Washington and Washington State to successfully lobby for health insurance for Graduate Assistants in their state legislature. In late fall, a one page survey was sent to all GA's on campus eliciting information about health insurance coverage and asking for individual GA stories on the personal impact of health insurance (or the lack of it) to be used in lobbying the Arizona Legislature for health insurance for GA's. Over 500 GA's returned the questionnaire. While working on this issue, the need for coordination with GSO's at ASU and NAU became apparent. In December, Tom Cooley and Mitzi Forbes went to Tempe to meet with the GSC presidents from ASU and NAU. The three organizations formed the United Graduate and Professional Students of Arizona (UGPSA) to coordinate efforts for graduate students and lobby on state-wide issues of concern to grad students.

Beginning in 1993 GPSC began to respond to efforts within the Arizona Board of Regents to implement differential tuition for graduate students. GPSC's arguments in opposition to differential tuition are included in the minutes of December 7, 1993. Tom Cooley and Dan McGee attended ABOR meetings during 1993 and 1994 to speak against differential tuition.