Administrators are leaning toward hiring a full-time Student Government adviser in lieu of Office Manager Cira Mervin’s retirement, according to Mike Giancola, adviser to the student body treasurer.

According to Giancola, director of the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics and Public Service, the executive student body officers and their advisers met for a second time a few days ago to look at how they would reallocate the money from Mervin’s position.

Although some of the student body officers talked about reallocating the money to student projects and just hiring work-study students instead, Student Body Treasurer Dave Foxx said that was no longer a likely option.

According to Foxx, a full-time adviser will be hired due to the nature of the job, but the timetable still remains unclear.

“There’s certainly things work-study students aren’t going to be able to do,” he said.

Foxx said work-study students cannot put students on payroll and though they are a valuable asset, there are just some things a full-time employee needs to do.

According to Adam Compton, finance chair and member of the personnel committee that will choose the new adviser upon the approval of Evelyn Reiman, the student body president’s adviser, several of the student body officers were not interested in hiring a full-time employee.

“They were more interested in hiring work-study students and [another] graduate student adviser,” he said.

Compton said he feels like it wasn’t fully Student Government’s decision to hire a full-time employee or not.

Although Reiman, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, said the decision to hire a full-time adviser is not final, she said she feels that it is the best decision for Student Government.

“One advantage of a full-time adviser is the continuity,” she said. “Grad students, by the nature of the job, are only going to be here a couple of years.”

Reiman said her goal would be to hire a new adviser this year so that he or she could work with the current student body officers.

“I’m in favor of a full-time position that would have Student Government as its primary focus,” she said.

She did say, however, hiring additional work-study students was still an option.

According to Giancola, historically, SG has even had two full-time employees.

“Now is a good opportunity to look at what are the needs from Student Government and make sure we’re addressing those needs,” he said.

Giancola said the group is looking to hire a dedicated full-time adviser and this new hire will affect the current SG advisers’ roles: his, Reiman’s and Tierza Wattss, Student Senate President’s adviser and associate director of CSLEPS.

Compton said one problem with this change is Student Government is not planning to raise its fee, but as legislature-mandated salary increases take effect, SG will have to pay the adviser more money.

He said the position already consumes one-fourth of SG’s budget.

“Because of this position, we can’t put more money into appropriations and other [student] programs,” he said.