Over 200 students have submitted applications for recently reopened Student Government (SG) cabinet and committee chair positions. Tyler Kissinger, SG president, attributes the high number of applicants to two main factors: a newly centralized application process and the proactive reputation of his slate, United Progress.

The three cabinet positions are director of communications, director of finance, and director of technology. Two of the 10 committee positions include chair of the Committee on Recognized Student Organizations and chair of the Uncommon Fund.

According to SG bylaws, the executive committee will appoint students to fill these positions. This is a change from past years, when cabinet and committee leadership positions were assumed by executive committee vice presidents. This spring, SG realized that having the vice president fill these roles was a poor allocation of resources.

Kissinger suggests that, in addition to the restructuring, the high number of applicants might be due in part to a new centralized application on the SG website. For many years SG used a spinoff website that often confused users..

“We wanted a process that was integrated with our website, especially for first-years and people who don’t really know as much about us.”

In addition to bringing the application over to the SG website, SG made all the applications due on the same day (Friday, September 25). According to Kissinger, this made the application process more intuitive and caught applicants who otherwise wouldn’t have known when their applications were due.

Kissinger said that a lot of the applicants—60 percent—were first-year students, suggesting that the attention surrounding last year’s election did not greatly influence application volume. However, none of the cabinet position applicants were first-year students. First-years are discouraged from applying to cabinet positions given the amount of work and commitment required.