A dozen new faces joined the ranks of ULM Student Government after a midweek election to fill the Associate Senate.
A vote among the student body placed three first-year students in each of ULM’s four undergrad colleges to serve alongside the rest of the SGA Senate as they learn the ropes.
The newly elected associate senators include Anna Lavergne, Kelly Loman and Payne Hagen in the College of Arts, Education and Sciences; Gabe Dinnat, Keristen Dixon and Maddie Hebert in the College of Business and Social Sciences; Aamir Jabbar, Bryce Bennett and Antwon Fletcher in the College of Health Sciences; and Lawson Marchand, Kathryn Kamlade and Gabrielle Thomas in the College of Pharmacy.
SGA altered the Associate Senate this semester under SGA President David Hernandez. The changes gave clarity to the role of associate senators in the legislative documents and assigned associate senators to current senators for mentorship.
“Now, the Associate Senate is more of a mentorship program for our new senators to have a monitoring period to allow them to be comfortable and gain confidence in their new roles,” Hernandez said.
Associate senators have all the abilities as other senators of SGA, but they have to report to their mentor senator for the first eight weeks.
In the past, Associate Senate seats were assigned to candidates who did not win a senate seat. If three seats were on a ballot and seven students ran, those receiving the highest votes were elected as senators, while the other four would become associate senators.
Now, the Associate Senate will be its own election.
“This new system avoids the confusion that our previous Associate Senate may have ran into and instead takes another approach to promote success and guidance for our new senators in order to have a more effective student government,” Hernandez said.
