David Cohen, the current speaker of the Treasury, was chosen to be the Student Union vice president of administration for the coming semester. He will be sworn in on Nov. 21.

Cohen will replace incumbent Kirsten Miller because she will study abroad in the spring.

The vice president of administration is the most internally oriented of the executive positions. Its holder is in charge of making sure that operations within SU run smoothly.

“I think of the position as the person who is the fixer, and they’re making sure that everything is going smoothly internally,” Cohen said. “It’s making sure that people are happy and that people are working hard for good causes so that SU can be functioning well externally.”

Cohen, a senior, has been involved with SU since his freshman year. Last year, Cohen was the vice president of finance of the executive council. His freshman and sophomore years, he was a Treasury representative and served as a member and then the chair of the Budget Committee.

As the speaker of the Treasury, Cohen has had to attend every SU Senate meeting.

“Based on the three-and-a-half years of experience, I feel like I have a lot of knowledge in SU,” Cohen said.

Cohen wants to work to hire a new technology coordinator and fix constitutional and statutory inconsistencies that he says can be stifling at times.

“When SU really gets stifled is when we’re caught up in internal matters that don’t matter to other students, so I’m there as a stopgap,” Cohen said.

Cohen is a double major in political science and education and a minor in Chinese.

Courtesy of Open

Miller’s resignation will take effect Nov. 21 in order to allow a smooth transition for her successor.

Though Miller says that her decision was tough, she cites the progress made by the Student Union executive board in the past eight months as part of her rationale for going abroad.

Miller said that the progress made by the Student Union executive board in the past eight months helped her rationalize her tough decision.

“I wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving an administration that I didn’t feel was doing its job,” she said.

Miller, along with Morgan DeBaun, Cody Katz, John Harrison York and Eliot Walker, was elected as part of the [open] slate last spring. Among her primary accomplishments while in office are making election software run more smoothly and revamping the Women’s Building as a space for student groups.

The vice president of administration is responsible for managing SU internally, acting as parliamentarian and overseeing recruitment and retention.

Miller, along with the other members of Student Union executive board, will choose a new VP of administration through an internal process that will begin this week. An application will be online Wednesday, and Miller’s successor will be announced in mid-November.

Student Union president Morgan DeBaun expects that three or four students will apply for the position.

Miller, a junior Economics and Strategy major in Olin, will spend the spring in London at City University. She plans to take classes in the Cass School of Business and hopes to intern with a government agency while there.

“I’ve always wanted to go abroad, and one of the reasons I chose Wash. U. was because of the abroad program,” Miller said.

Miller is not the first VP administration to resign in recent memory. Last year, Trevor Mattea resigned from the same position, citing dissatisfaction with his role in the administration.

Miller expects that the transition will be easy thanks to premeditated organization and planning.

“The majority of the work was frontloaded over the summer, knowing that there was the potential that I would be accepted into this program,” Miller said.

Nate Ferguson assumed the role of vice president of administration for Student Union on Wednesday following confirmation by Senate and Treasury. He has stepped down from his prior role as vice president of programming. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

Junior Nate Ferguson, former vice president of programming of Student Union, was confirmed as vice president of administration by both SU Treasury and Senate this week.

Ferguson promised to rework the internal processes in SU by increasing communication within the body and communicating with student governments in peer universities. Ferguson’s appointment comes after former Vice President of Administration Trevor Mattea’s resignation in October.

The position is focused on internal processes in SU. The vice president of administration helps to maintain the office and foster communication among the various bodies involved with SU.

“I really did enjoy my role as vice president of programming, but now I see my role as administration because that’s more where I’m needed right now,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson was selected by other executives from a short list of two candidates, both of whom were involved with SU.

Ferguson sees himself as qualified for the position because of his previous experience with SU. One project he has already started is working with senators and other SU members to gather feedback on SU as a whole. This project aims at improving SU retention. Ferguson also wants to have an internal newsletter and be in contact with other student governments to gather ideas for projects and ways to implement them.

Although there will be a new selection process for a vice president of programming, Ferguson said he thinks that the transition will be smooth because of his continued presence in the body.

“I’ll be there to make sure that they are transitioned well, [and that] any questions they have are answered,” Ferguson said.

With this new appointment, only two of the original five executives are still holding their elected positions.

Ferguson said he does not think his shift to a different position will affect the administration’s accountability.

“I see it more as I’m doing what I feel is best for the student body and SU as a whole,” Ferguson said. “I don’t see it as losing accountability because we’ve gone through this with other people, unfortunately.”

Senior Jeff Nelson, SU president, said he does not see this as a problem either.

“[We] took into account the fact that we all ran as a team…Nate specifically ran as programming but it was within the parameters of that vision…he’s still working on that same platform, just in a new capacity,” Nelson said. “People vote for ideas, not people performing mundane tasks.”

The position of vice president of programming was the only one that was contested in the last election. Ferguson was asked to fill that position on the Montana slate because of his two-year experience as president of his class council.

The duties of the vice president of programming are primarily running the SU pre-Orientation program and planning SUp All Night, an activity at the beginning of the school year.

The new vice president of programming, unlike that of administration, may come from outside SU.