The Student Government Assembly elected Tanner Long as speaker of the Assembly with a 33–2 vote Tuesday night.
Long, a liberal arts representative and government senior, said he thinks SG has failed in the past to fully represent students and said he wants to include more student voices during his term.
“I want to foster a better connectedness between Student Government and the student body,” Long said. “Everyone is a member of Student Government on this campus, and it’s about time we started treating it that way.”
Long said he hopes to implement a program in which representatives will speak at more organizations’ meetings on campus. He also said he wants to help improve the SG assembly meeting livestream and oversee the creation of more ad-hoc committees.
“My ideas may seem ambitious, and I will be held accountable to them,” Long said.
Long said he feels the speaker position has typically served as a stepping stone for future SG presidential candidates, but he said that is not his intention.
“Since I’m graduating next spring, that gives me the ability to focus 100 percent on the duties of speaker,” Long said.
Long ran against Kallen Dimitroff, University-wide representative and government junior, in the race. Dimitroff failed to gain the nineteen votes needed for a majority vote with a 17–18 vote in the Assembly. Long also failed to receive a majority with a 18–15–2 vote.
The Assembly recalled the vote, but Long again failed to gain a majority with a 18–16–1 vote. The Assembly would have then re-voted on both Dimitroff and Long, but Dimitroff withdrew her candidacy for the position. After Dimitroff’s withdrawal, the Assembly elected Long.
Dimitroff withdrew her candidacy because of the long process involved in electing a speaker of the Assembly. The initial votes and recall took more than 30 minutes.
“I don’t want to make us do this [vote] again,” Dimitroff said.
President and Vice President Xavier Rotnofsky and Rohit Mandalapu were also sworn into their offices Tuesday night. The meeting, which took around three hours, culminated in a pizza delivery.
“The meeting went longer than most meetings, and I hadn’t eaten since 11 a.m.,” Rotnofsky, Plan II and linguistics junior, said. “Because of that, I figured, why not get a pizza delivered to Rohit and me?”
Rotnofsky and Mandalapu, Plan II and economics senior, are in the process of selecting an executive board and the President’s Student Advisory Council. They have received 105 applications, which will equate to over 30 hours of interviews.
Rotnofsky said he is excited to start his term and work with all of those in SG.
“I’m looking forward to working with the Assembly and seeing how we can work together and make SG more present on campus than just at a Tuesday meeting,”
Rotnofsky said.
