After running the Undergraduate Student Government for the last academic year, former President Johnnie L. Lewis and former Vice President Nick Gamero prepared to hand the reins over to new administration at last night’s meeting.
In an effort to continue their path of change, Lewis and Gamero called a new type of meeting – one that specifically dealt with transitioning incoming and outgoing senators.
‘Last year we had a brand new senate and there wasn’t a lot of discussion about what happened and what worked,’ Lewis said. ‘We wanted to create actual, physical, tangible time to sit down and make transitions from this year to next year.’
Gamero, who was in charge of running the meeting, began by having senators introduce themselves in an effort to build familiarity with incoming members of USG.
‘Use the people who were here this year to learn what happened over the course of last year,’ Gamero said. ‘Working together makes things run more smoothly.’
In an effort to prepare for next week’s committee chairs and speaker elections, Gamero and Lewis had the current position holders explain their roles and progress they had made in the last year.
Student Welfare Chair Melinda Grooms, Academic Affairs Chair Liesl Dye, Organization Liaison Chair Leo Almeida and Speaker Jeremy Lehman addressed the roles of their committees within USG and explained what incoming senators should expect in terms of progress.
Although nominations for the positions were made last night, nothing is finalized yet, Gamero said. Emergency nominations and voting will be occurring at next week’s meeting.
But while USG waits to elect their new committee heads, the former chairs already have expectations for the senators who take over their positions.
‘Whoever takes the role of speaker needs to be fair and balanced, as well as a great communicator,’ Lehman said. ‘They need to remember that by leading the senate, they are representing their own constituents as well as reminding senators to represent their constituents as well.’
Almeida noted that the senator who takes over his position as OLC chair must start the year off with a bang.
In order to effectively run the committee, the chair must be able to recognize what a tool the student body and the senate are in getting things accomplished, Almeida said.
‘It’s good to know that you can trust your senators to get things done,’ he said.
And though this meeting marked the first transitional meeting USG has ever seen, President John Waynick feels it was successful.
‘We had input from both outgoing and incoming senators, but the real action will happen at the [USG] retreat this weekend,’ Waynick said. ‘It will offer a way for senators to get to know each other as well as offer a chance for them to goal set external and internal issues for next year.’
