Officer of Student Activities Keeryung Kim’s resignation from Student Government was announced on Jan. 31. The resignation was an unexpected event, motivating the Student Government to act decisively in order to fill the vacancy.

That same afternoon, the General Assembly elected an Elections Commission to conduct the elections. This early response was necessitated by the fact that there are six weeks until the next prescribed election — too long to be without an Officer of Student Activities.

Despite the swiftness of the decision to expedite the election, there seemed to be little resistance from the student body according to Treasurer Yuqi Sun.

”Nobody spoke against as I can recall,” he said, although Sun added that there might have been one abstention.

Along with the establishment of an Elections Commission, there was an additional vote on procedures for special by-elections. The only notable procedural difference as compared to standard elections would be the timeframe. Senior and Student Government Vice President Alex Nyikos noted the importance of expediting the elections.

”We also passed an updated set of procedures for special elections in order to expedite the election process, to minimize the impact on [Student Interest Groups] and other student groups,” he said.

Part of the responsibilities of the Officer of Student Activities is the overseeing and management of SIGs. In particular, budgeting for SIGs is one of the primary functions of the Officer. To avoid any complications, Nyikos further stressed how the Student Government had made communication and cooperation with SIGs a priority.

“[Sun] is working very closely with all of the SIGs,” Nyikos said. “We've divided up the rest of the short-term roles of the [Officer of Student Activities] between the rest of the [Executive Board]; when we have a new person in the role, and that will be soon, the transition should be very smooth.”

Sun, in explaining what this work with SIGs entailed, expressed a similar sentiment.

”SIGs are not affected at all,” he said. ”SIGs have not started working yet, and are not in need of the micromanagement of the Officer of Student Activities yet.”

Despite the expectation of problems caused by Kim’s resignation, voices in the Student Government expressed that this event was a moment of important self-reflection — a time to reinforce and rethink the role of the Officer. Sun, having taken on some of these responsibilities in the meantime, imparted some optimism.

”In the future it would be great if the person would take on more responsibility and redefine the role in a more dynamic way,” he said. “I hope the elected can play an important role in working on SIG guidebook so in future people can go to this single document about how to create a SIG, organize events, apply for budgets and use OrgSync.”