Since the end of last semester, the Minnesota Student Association has changed members more than Menudo.
At MSA’s first forum of the semester Tuesday night, two new executive board members were elected.
Forum members were already planning to elect a new campus relations chairman after the resignation of Claire Antelman. What they weren’t expecting was to find a replacement for Diversity Education Fund Grant chairwoman Julia Krieger. She publicly announced her resignation at Tuesday’s forum.
“I feel that my time will be better spent in other areas,” Krieger said.
After serving as DEF Grant chairwoman for the last two years, Krieger said she is sad to see her tenure end.
MSA still wasn’t finished switching around positions, however. Nathan Olson has stepped down as the MSA representative to the Board of Regents, though he will be a ranking student representative to the board.
“Like me, he feels that his time can be better spent doing other things that can more directly affect the community,” Krieger said.
Replacing Olson is former ranking student representative to the Board of Regents, Adam Engelman. Olson will move to the ranking student representative position, which does not give him any voting rights.
The forum’s first decision of the night was to elect the new DEF Grants chairman. After presentations by two candidates, Jason Houle, a chemical engineering sophomore who has served on the DEF Grants Committee for the last year, was elected.
“He has been such an insightful and dedicated member this year,” Krieger said.
Houle said he believes in the importance of diversity and MSA’s responsibility to educate the University on it.
“As the student body government, we have a direct responsibility to students to educate them,” he said. “Diversity directly affects students’ view of the University and the world as a whole.”
But Antelman’s successor has been a little more difficult to place. MSA thought they had found her replacement in Grace Hanna, but Hanna resigned because of time constraints.
Economics senior Peter Hartman said he thinks he is up to the challenge and will fill Antelman’s vacated seat, as of Tuesday evening.
The biggest issue on Hartman’s plate for the semester is to get MSA’s name out there. “The best way is to go out and be seen,” he said.
Hartman said that he would like to work on publicizing for MSA by eliminating the middle man.
Antelman had a few words of wisdom for Hartman.
“Marketing to such a large and diverse audience brings its share of challenges, and MSA has only so much labor and resource,” she said. “Any response is a good response; you only have a problem when you get zero response from your efforts.”
Krieger said she is very optimistic in the executive board as a whole this semester and thinks they are ready to move forward.
“MSA has gone through a lot of hurdles the last few months and people are really ready to move forward,” Krieger said. “I think people are breathing a sigh of relief.”