CSL elects new chair, vice chair

By Kaitlyn Schallhorn

A group hoping to establish a student government that is democratically elected is now officially a Winthrop organization.
Winthrop Student Congress was chartered this week during the Council of Student Leaders’ weekly Monday meeting.  This week’s meeting also served as CSL’s election night for chair and vice chair.
Current elections allow for only CSL members to vote.
Members of CSL unanimously re-elected the council’s chair and vice chair during Monday’s meeting.
Sophomore political science major Sydney Evans ran unopposed for CSL chair and junior business major Tripp Volk ran unopposed for vice chair.
Evans and Volk each gave a short speech before answering three questions each from other CSL members.
“I was not aware that I would fall in love with it (CSL) as much as I had,” Evans said at the beginning of her speech.
She said she is proud of what CSL has accomplished this past year, including the efforts to save P.A.S.C.A.L.
There is work to be done next year, Evans said.
“Somehow CSL has gotten a disconnect over how it informs its constituents, and that needs to be addressed,” she said.
After hearing speeches and answers to their questions, CSL members were told to take out scrap sheets of paper and write down their votes. The votes were then collected and counted in the back of the room.
After counting ballots was finished, Winthrop Student Congress’s charter was approved.
CSL members rapidly fired questions at the group members present in order to learn more about the group.
“A big part of trying to get chartered is a way to work with CSL,” said Devang Joshi, one of Winthrop Student Congress’s leader.     
Group members told CSL members that they did not want to work against CSL but wanted to work together to benefit the Winthrop community.
Joshi said Winthrop Student Congress’s main purpose is to implement student-wide elections, not get rid of everything CSL stands for or does.
After a motion to vote to charter Winthrop Student Congress, several CSL members were silent. Regardless of the silence, however, the group was chartered.
There is an ad hoc CSL committee working to communicate and partner with the newly chartered student congress.
Evans  said she plans on working with the ad hoc group to come up with a plan for the future of Winthrop’s student government.
“I want to come up with a plan to cater to the best of both worlds,” Evans said after the meeting.
She said she wants a student government where the main positions, such as chair and vice chair, are democratically elected by the entire student body.
She is in favor of keeping the application process for other positions, however, so that the “less charismatic, more shy students” will be able to get involved, she said.
“My goal is by the time I leave office next year I’d be running some kind of election commission,” Evans said.
Winthrop Student Congress members say the next step is coming up with an action plan.
“The main goal is to have the new democratic government in place by the 2011-2012 year,” said D.C. Swinton, senior envioronmental studies major.
Joshi said his group’s charter is evidence that CSL needs to be replaced by a more powerful student government.
“We have let people know we demonstrated how CSL is totally incapable of denying a group a charter even if the group’s sole purpose is to demolish them,” said Joshi, junior computer science major. “If you don’t believe in something, you should have the power to say no.”