New ASU members

The ASU voted in new members into the Executive Council.

By Gabriel Arizon, Co-Editor-in-Chief

The ASU Executive Council appointed a new parliamentarian and two new commissioners to fill its vacant seats for the year.

Since the start of the semester, the Executive Council has been looking for students to fill empty seats on the ASU. On Sept. 25, the council interviewed three Valley students who had made it through their vetting process: Joseph Patterson, Caesar Taura and Jose Romo.

The students were interviewed for the position of parliamentarian, commissioner of institutional effectiveness and commissioner of ethnic and cultural affairs, respectively. After all the interviews, the ASU voted in each member by a two-thirds majority.

Upon finding out the results, Taura said that he felt accepted. “I knew one day I would like to make a difference through political strategy,” he said. “Knowing that I wanted to make the decision to join the student government, it made me feel like I had a purpose going to college.”

Romo will be the first student to be commissioner of ethnic and cultural affairs since its inception last semester when it was amended to the ASU constitution by a student vote.

“I’ll do my best to support the students at Valley College,” Romo said. “I’ll try to represent their different perspectives or values they all have and see what I can do to accommodate, to make it fun and make it a [better] learning environment.”

Patterson, who is the president of Phi Theta Kappa and a pre-law student, previously ran for vice president of the ASU in the spring election but dropped out of the race due to not knowing if he would be able to fulfill the time commitment.

“What I’m trying to do is get an understanding of how governance procedures happen and how governing bodies run, so I can get some experience,” Patterson said.

The Executive Council is able to vote in new members through Article VII, Section 4 of their constitution, which states that all vacant ASU positions, with the exception of president and vice president, shall be appointed by the Executive Council with a two-thirds majority vote by the members present.

On Oct. 9, the Executive Council voted in Sebastian Diaz as vice president. The ASU still lacks a commissioner of social media and a commissioner of health and safety, as well as two inter-club council representatives.

The last deadline for students to apply for an ASU position is Oct. 19. To be an ASU member, the student must have attended Valley for at least a semester prior to being elected, have completed a minimum of five units and have a cumulative and current GPA of 2.0.