Student Body President Jackie Gonzalez has submitted an executive order that overturned her appointment of Anderson Shumate for the Board of Elections chair leaving Student Senate President Mitchell Moravec the responsibility to appoint the next candidate.

Gonzalez’s executive order states that Shumate, a graduate student majoring in international studies, has declined the appointment as chair of the Board of Elections. It also says that the Student Senate president is now responsible to appoint a chair because the time has lapsed for Gonzalez to do so.  

“This is similar to other appointments,” said Senate President Mitchell Moravec, a fifth-year studying materials science and engineering and psychology. “The president basically has deadlines to meet when making appointments. If she hadn’t made it by a certain date in our statues, it devolves — it goes to the Senate president, that I’m supposed to make their appointments and then it’s like 15 more days. If I still don’t do it, it goes to the pro tempore. So it is supposed to set us up in a way so we are not left with a position vacant.”

According to the executive order, Moravec’s appointments must be vetted by the Senate Committee on Appointments. The committee is led by chair Sam Chan, a second-year studying political science and business administration. Also on the committee is Zac Lentz, a graduate student studying biological and agricultural engineering, and Adam Schmidt, a second-year studying civil engineering. She explained the committee’s role in the appointment.

“According to Jackie’s Executive Order No. 5, in there it talks about how Student Senate President Mitchell Moravec appointments will be vetted by the Senate committee on appointments,” Chan said. “When he decides how he wants to do it and picks a candidate we will sit down, like we’ve done in the past with other appointments, and look at the process … Just asking sure that everything was fair and equivalent all along the way.”

According to Chan, the committee will take into account how and who the appointment was open to, how it was advertised, if applications and interviews were required and if they were, what they involved.

“We will be meeting again once he has picked his appointment,” Chan said. “Talking with Mitchell about the process and we will be writing a report, just what we observed throughout his process and presenting it to Senate, hopefully at the next meeting.”

Moravec explained that even though Student Government elections are happening soon, his appointment must still receive a two-thirds majority vote from the Senate.

“Senate is mandated to have a two-third vote,” Moravec said. “That all being said, we would ideally like to have it done by the next meeting, which is January 24. It’s no secret this is a time crunch. We are definitely trying to get someone in so they can start being trained and getting ready for elections that start as early as February when books open.”

If the appointment is not made by the Student Senate meeting on Jan. 24, it will not be voted on until the meeting on Feb. 7 after books have already opened for the upcoming election.

Moravec said that finding an appointee this close to elections could be difficult because there are certain aspects that hinder a person from being able to hold the position.

“There are rules about who can serve in the chair role and on elections, which include some basic things like you can’t be running for an election, you can’t be sitting on the Government Relations Committee in Senate,” Moravec said. “The catch here is that you cannot be a public supporter of a campaign nor a member of a campaign team. As much as we know, we don’t really know who’s on whose team because it’s a culture of not sharing that information and really trying to respect the rules of you can’t start campaigning until campaigning starts.”

Gonzalez declined to comment further on her executive order. Shumate also declined to comment.

The Student Senate meeting on Jan. 24 will be located in Talley Student Union in room 4140 at 7:30 p.m.