Student Government’s new executive board has begun filling the more than 100 policy and agency director positions and external appointments.
Last week, SG President Natalie Butler and Vice President Ashley Baker appointed the five-member executive board that will serve with them for their term. “We wanted to pick the people who individually would be able to do a great job in their roles and that would also work really well as a team between the five of them and then with Ashley and I,” Butler said.
Accounting senior Andrew Townsell said that, as the newly appointed SG chief of staff, he will focus on implementing a set of broad reforms to SG’s new structure created by a task force and approved by students in a special election in February.
Townsell said since April 5, the executive board has conducted about 90 interviews for agency positions and hopes to fill all open spots before the summer.
“Our vision is that by the time fall comes around, the board and agencies will already be in motion and running like a well-oiled machine,” he said.
Townsell said the executive board members will begin meeting with agency directors as they appoint them to define each director’s objectives.
“I want to make sure we are sitting down and figuring out, not just some abstract mission statement, but specifically their work plan and timeline to meet each objective,” he said.
The board wants to split all the platforms up among the seven executive board members and have a point person for each policy objective. The most immediate priority is acting on the platform goal of increasing student input in the University budgeting process, which should happen very quickly, he said.
In the first meeting of Butler and Baker’s term, SG passed a resolution to get student representation on the University Budget Council, said former SG University-wide representative Matt Portillo, who co-authored the resolution.
Portillo said this position will differ from the Senate of College Councils’ College Tuition and Budget Advisory Committees because those teams work with individual college budgets, while the University Budget Council handles the University-wide budget of more than $2.2 billion.
