SARAH STOESZ | Staff Reporter
Butler University’s next Student Government Association executive board is preparing to take office for the 2014-2015 school year.
SGA announced the slate of next school year’s officers at the assembly meeting last Wednesday.
There are seven officer positions in addition to SGA president. The SGA Assembly elected the vice presidents of finance and administration the week after spring break, said Chad Pingel, SGA president-elect.
The incoming president appoints the five other officer positions. Students had to apply to be vice president of programming, public relations, diversity programming, and operations. Eight applications were received for these positions, Pingel said.
“There were a couple positions that were uncontested, so there was only one person running, but we still wanted to have the interviews to make sure that they were the right candidate for the position,” he said.
The incoming president and an adviser interviewed all of the applicants, said Hanna Poitras, vice president of public relations for next school year.
Pingel chose the officers after conducting interviews with the consideration from the PuLSE office.
“With those, I really look for experience,” Pingel said. “I look for passion that people had for those roles specifically, and overall knowledge and understanding of what the student wants and having good goals to take it somewhere in the future.”
The new SGA president directly appoints the eighth officer positon, the parliamentarian. This position helps run SGA Assembly meetings, Pingel said.
The SGA constitution details the process of appointing and electing the officer positions. The student body votes on the constitution every school year, said Levester Johnson, vice president for student affairs.
The new officers will officially come into their positions at the passing of the gavel at the SGA banquet in the spring, Johnson said.
“What’s happening right now in the interim is that all of these folks are meeting with the folks that they are taking over from,” Johnson said.
The new officers will attend a meeting at the end of this school year to set a new goal and direction for the executive board. The new vice presidents will be accepting applications and conducting interviews for positions on their respective boards, Pingel said.
“Personally, I think there are a lot of changes that can be made within the public relations board itself, and I had a few ideas in mind that I really would like to implement,” Poitras said. “We have a lot of good ideas and things we kind of want to change around with it, both in SGA and on campus, and I am really excited to start on that.”
