“Transitioning into my role [as president]  has been increasingly difficult…because I have to play a game of what is worth more of my time,” Luis Reyes, ASCWU President said, in the ASCWU BOD meeting on Monday, Oct.17.

During the meeting, Reyes and Interim Executive Vice President and Senate Speaker, Brayden Smith, talked about how they are struggling with the workload due to the fact they do not have a permanent Executive Vice President.

“I think last week, and it was homecoming week, me and Brayden worked closely to 45 hours, we’re only really allowed to work 19,” Reyes said at the meeting.

Reyes said the hiring of a new executive vice president will help make his job a lot easier.

Smith presented the Executive Vice President Search Proposal. 

In this proposal, there are two options. The first option, option A, is a special election. This would look like the elections that happen in the spring, but on a faster timeline.

“If the board decided to go with this option, we would vote on it and then call the election commission to hold a special election,” Smith said. 

Smith said at this point it would be open for students to apply, ideally for a week, then the Election Commission and advisors would then look over the candidates. 

The students would then have time to campaign. Smith said while it is ambitious, he hopes an election would be held around Nov. 14.

The other option was option B, which is a BOD appointment process. 

“In our bylaws and constitution, the board does have the ability or more specifically, the President has the ability to appoint an individual to any vacant position,” Smith said. “The BOD as a whole would interview all of these applicants, giving them all a fair and equitable chance. Ideally, we would choose two finalists so our top two candidates, and then present these top two candidates to the ASCWU student body.”

Smith said the student body would have a chance to meet these candidates then the BOD would make their choice and announce it at the next public meeting. In a 5-0-0 vote, the ASCWU voted for option B.

At the meeting, ASCWU also discussed the future of the COVID-19 vaccine requirement at CWU.

“The Senate did pass a resolution at our meeting last week on October 10 to recommend that the university keep the COVID-19 vaccination requirement in place,” Smith said. 

Smith said he will have a formal resolution for this by next week. 

After the meeting, Reyes said he loved seeing how passionate students are and how they can give them the space to speak on their concerns. 

“I do hope that some of the comments that we heard…that it empowers us to have the agency to kind of have some change here on campus,” Reyes said. “But also that administrators and faculty will kind of listen to the needs of the student body and us.”

Smith said a highlight of this meeting was seeing the student engagement because they rarely get that much public comment from students. 

“Sometimes you question, ‘am I doing what students want me to do?’ ‘What do students think?’ And so hearing back from them getting their feedback is always really useful because it helps us kind of stay grounded,” Smith said.

Student Senate meeting 

During the student senate meeting, the senators voted in a 6-0-1 vote to appoint Senator Charles Johnson as the vice speaker for the 2022-2023 academic term. 

The senators also reviewed the wording of the resolution for the requirement of COVID-19 vaccinations on campus.

Angela Kyle, graduate school intern for the transfer center and orientation coordinator, spoke both at the ASCWU BOD meeting and the Student Senate meeting about this week being national transfer student week.

Kyle said the goal of this week is to showcase the transfer students because they make up 41% of CWU’s population. 

They plan to showcase the students through a partition in the SURC that will have different transfer student success stories on them and different events that will happen throughout campus.