Resignations rock ASG
The Associated Student Government’s turnover rate has increased dramatically with the sudden resignation of five ASG members. As of press time, three members have officially quit their positions and two others have unofficially signaled their resignation.
These members included the Vice President of Senate, Waylae Gregoire, the Secretary of Senate, the Budget Chair, and two other senators. Officially, Gregoire, Whitney Florian, and Matt Douraghi have resigned. The other two ASG members have signaled their resignations by not upholding their duties and failing to attend any recent meetings. Since ASG members are volunteers, it is not required for them to disclose the reasoning for their exit – and in this case, none have chosen to do so.
“All that I can disclose is that Waylae and I left on personal reasons,” said Sonia Vaswani, former budget chair. Vaswani has yet to officially resign. “She hasn’t kept up her duties anyways. She hasn’t shared one of the budget meetings in awhile,” said Melissa Fenerci, Secretary of Publicity.
“No students should be affected by this. We do have a few people interested (in the open positions) so it shouldn’t be a problem,” said Erin Long, Acting Director of Student Development.
On Thursday April 1, there was a meeting to reappoint some vacant positions. Trent Nunz was elected to be the new treasurer, and Adam Williams was elected to be the new Vice President of Senate.
“I am personally excited to have the opportunity to run the meetings, post the agendas, and manage the documentation of the minutes because I have long thought it to be a tedious task that people just did,” Williams said.
“After serving up to this point, I have noticed a lot of notes from important discussions not in the minutes so it makes me reevaluate the function of keeping the minutes handy. They are essential in giving credit where credit is due; they are not to be tampered with because they can provide the decision-makers [Senate] with valuable information that has happened in the past.”
Williams went on to express his frustration with the way the ASG senate information had previously been handled and his hope that things can change with the newly appointed staff.
“I can’t tell you how difficult it is to constantly recall via my own memory all the things that have taken place at the Senate meetings,” Williams said. “So all of us should be referring to the Senate binder, otherwise the information we toss around is likely to be subjective or invalidated because it is not admissible if it cannot be shown to others.”
Several events have been affected by the shakeup. The future of the Dodgeball Tournament is unclear, and the scheduled Jamba Juice giveaway appears to have been postponed indefinitely.
“We have made $4,376 available for our curbing the stress during finals week event” Williams said. This event will provide students with snacks and beverages as well as scantrons, greenbooks and other supplies.