The Minnesota Student Association met for the last forum of the year Tuesday to fill positions for next year and take care of final business.

Sophie Wallerstedt became the next speaker of the forum in a 31-4 victory over Paul Rudeen.

The election meant it was Drew Horwood’s last forum as MSA’s speaker after an involved career with MSA.

Horwood attended his first MSA forum during his sophomore year after he realized he wanted to get involved with student government. He quickly moved up the ranks and served as director of campus relations before becoming speaker for his final year with MSA.

The speaker’s primary job is to understand rules and procedures and to ensure forum runs smoothly. Horwood organizes the meetings, keeps track of membership, sends emails, assigns roles and more.

Horwood said he has loved his time as speaker, but it has kept him very busy.

“By this point I’m ready to graduate,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m ready to leave MSA, but you can’t do one and not the other.”

He said he’ll miss showing up every week and being around people who are as motivated on issues as he is.

Per MSA tradition, Wallerstadt immediately took over as speaker following the election for the rest of forum and conducted the remainder of the elections.

 “I know I can never fill Drew’s shoes because he did such an amazing job, but I will do my best,” she said.

After losing to Wallerstedt in the election for speaker, Rudeen decided to run for a position as ranking at-large representative.

Liz Joyce became the next director of student outreach and engagement with 26 votes compared to Mitch Menigo and Tyler Hubler who received 6 and 3 votes, respectively.

Joyce said she would like to further develop MSA’s new website and possibly set up monthly video addresses to the student body from next year’s leadership.

Nate Schwab and Moshe Volovik became the new Student Senate Consultative Committee representatives and Schwab went on to become a ranking representative as well.

University Policies and Student Concerns, Facilities Housing and Transportation and Grants committee director positions went to Marissa Kramer, Kyle Olson and Mac Cameron, respectively, in uncontested elections.

Tuesday’s meeting was also the first time MSA approved a summer spending budget of $9,360.

According to President-elect Taylor Williams, past MSA leadership spent funds with the expectation of approval and reimbursement once the final budget was approved.

The budget includes a $1,000 stipend for a treasurer or accountant over the summer in order to file taxes by their June deadline.

Williams said the organization needs to clear around two years of back taxes that haven’t been filed to the IRS yet.

“If we don’t file we lose our nonprofit status, which would be really dire to the organization,” he said.