Temple Student Government’s steering committee voted Monday to approve candidates for two vacant Parliament seats.
Parliamentarian Jacob Kurtz appointed junior bioengineering major Neil Chada for the College of Engineering seat and sophomore musical theater major Doreen Nguyen for the School of Theater, Film and Media Arts seat in late June.
Chada and Nguyen sent their resumes and statements of interest to members of the steering committee, who began questioning them via email in early July. Questioning ended in mid-July, but a vote was not taken until the end of the month.
According to the TSG Constitution, both candidates need to be approved by the steering committee in a simple majority vote. Both candidates were approved 7-1.
The steering committee, which is made up of the Speaker and the committee heads, is responsible for setting the Parliament agenda and approving new appointments to Parliament. A new steering committee has not been established by the current Parliament but members of the former steering committee retain emeritus membership status, which allows them to vote on new appointments to Parliament until a new steering committee can be established.
The current steering committee is made up of the former Speaker and the seven former committee chairs.
Chada said that his goal is to get engineering students talking about TSG as a place to bring comments and concerns since he feels like TSG was lacking representation from the College of Engineering last year.
“A lot of times, the people in engineering get carried away with what they’re doing and everyone feels like no one has an avenue where they can project their voices,” he said. “My primary focus is to streamline that and make it accessible to everyone.”
Outreach to the academic advising office and faculty are among his top priorities as a representative, he added.
Nguyen said she hopes to ensure that her school has more of a voice in TSG by talking to large classes and using her positions as a peer adviser and resident assistant to hear different concerns.
“A lot of people [in TFMA] don’t feel as represented on TSG,” she said. “I want to be that person they can go to with concerns that I can bring up to the entire student government.”
After this vote, there are still three vacant Parliament seats: Boyer College of Music and Dance, Transfer Students and Graduate/Fifth Year Plus. The primary focus within Parliament is training the existing Parliament representatives, Kurtz said, adding that once that is completed he will work with the Elections Commissioner to try to fill the seats.
Two freshman class representatives, the RHA representative and the Greek life representative will be elected at the beginning of the fall semester.
Be the first to comment