Student Association’s search for a new Vice President culminated Feb. 14 with Alfonso Gunaratnam.

The Vice President leads all the meetings in Student Association. They must be impartial and unbiased because of this. It is very important for the Vice President to not act in favor of themselves, but to be equal to everyone.

Now that Gunaratnam is back from studying abroad, President of Student Association Jacob Schimmel appointed Gunaratnam for this position. Schimmel even looked at Gunaratnam for State Affairs during his first term.

Gunaratnam has been on student senate for 3 years. During his time on senate, he was the senator for Asian student organizations. Gunaratnam was also chair for Students for a Free Tibet for two years and the chair for the Diversity Organization Coalition. However, since he is the now the new Vice President, he will be stepping down from both positions.

Schimmel appointed Gunaratnam because he not only knows parliamentary procedure quite well, but also local affairs. Schimmel stated, “Alfonso knows the senate well; he’s been here since the beginning of his college career.”

Both Schimmel and the Senate wanted the Vice President to be someone internal and who knows the senate well. Schimmel commented, “He’s done a lot of work, whether it be diversity or just general senate stuff overall.”

The student senators had a couple of questions for Gunaratnam regarding his involvement on campus and how he would continue to incorporate diversity organizations. Gunaratnam stated, “Well, I think a lot of the diversity organizations are already underrepresented. So, I think it’s a great thing to have more diversity organizations here on senate.” Gunaratnam will also try to be as responsive as he can as Vice President.

When it came to voting, Schimmel and the senate decided to postpone the two-week rule in order to vote during that meeting. The two-week rule is usually put in place so that when an issue or a new topic is presented to the senate they have two weeks to comprehend the topic. This way they have more time to determine what they think about the topic and what they want to do about it.

However, since Student Association didn’t have an official vice president and their president pro tempore was stepping in, they decided to move voting to that day. This way, if Colin Giles, the current president pro tempore, wasn’t at a meeting, Student Association wouldn’t have to worry about finding someone to lead the meeting.

During the process of finding a new Vice President, multiple questions regarding how student association runs their meetings came up. Numerous senators want to look into their bylaws and processes for how their meetings are run.

Now that Student Association has an official Vice President, they will be able to tackle new topics and discussions with renewed fervor.