Several appointments were made to positions within the Student Government Association during the senate meeting Wednesday.
Positions filled included chief of staff, speaker for the senate and pro tempore speaker, as well as various positions in the four committees.
Stephen Cronin was endorsed for the position of speaker for the senate by former Speaker Reyes Ramirez and was later elected to the position by the senate members.
“He’d be a good one,” Reyes said.
“He knows (the rules) like the back of his hand and I think he runs an efficient meeting.”
Cronin said he plans on taking a “transpartisan” role as speaker and will not sponsoring or writing legislation while in the position.
“I don’t really believe in partisanship from the speaker’s position,” he said.
“My perspective on what the speaker does is more limited, perhaps, that what the last speaker did.”
SGA President Cedric Bandoh laid out a schedule for the task forces reforming the bylaws and election and judicial codes, with the task force meeting over the rest of the week and the final vote by the senate as early as April 25.
“It is a lot to get done in a matter of two and a half weeks, but I believe with the expertise of the individuals we have on the task forces, this will get done,” Bandoh said.
“It’s necessary for us to move forward and do a good job this school year.”
Vice President Turner Harris presented a possible change to the current methods of open forum between students, SGA and the administration — the use of MindMixer software to create an online forum allowing students to share support ideas.
“Also, kind of an accountability aspect there that students are posing ideas and the right people are looking at them,” Harris said.
The reason Harris wants to make the change, he said, is that the senators in the last administration fell far below their town hall budget.
“Instead of allocating $5,000 and spending $1,500 on pizza, how about lets get some software to replace that,” Harris said.
The first problem facing the implementation of the software, however, is the cost.
“I don’t really see this getting implemented until we get our new budget,” Harris said.
“We currently have $5,000 in the senate budget, and for a campus of 40,000 students, it would cost us about $8,000, which is actually not bad … I think $8,000 is actually pretty reasonable.”
Other SGA appointees include Christopher Holly to chief of staff and Sean Tarver to speaker pro tempore.
