Marquette Student Government elected Kyle Whelton, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences, to be the new Legislative Vice President Thursday. Whelton ran unopposed in an election that faced challenges due to the delay of the general election to last week.
“I think Kyle brings a tremendous amount of professionalism to the job,” said newly elected President Sam Schultz in his first meeting in his new role. “This is the first year I’ve known him, but he’s very, very organized.”
Schultz is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences.
According to the MUSG constitution, the LVP must be elected in the first senate meeting after the general election. This raised some concern among members of the senate, who believed there was not enough attention paid to the election due to the delay of the general election – the results of which were announced the morning of the meeting.
Several senators attempted to amend the constitution to delay the election of LVP one week so that the senators, some of whom were only elected Wednesday, could have more time to consider the position.
“I wanted to hopefully create some dissention,” said Emily Pirkl, the Carpenter Tower senator who proposed the amendment. “Not that I don’t like the senator who was running, but I just wanted people to think about the issue.”
Despite the movement to delay his election, Whelton supported the idea of addressing the issue in the future.
“I wasn’t offended by what they were trying to do,” said Whelton. “Obviously it couldn’t go constitutionally, but their intentions were correct. This has been a very challenging election cycle.”
Whelton, who served this year as a senator from the College of Arts & Sciences and was re-elected to the position on Wednesday, will step down from his position as senator and said he is excited to move forward with his new position as LVP.
“One of the things that’s very appealing about LVP is (that) you work person-to-person with all the senators,” Whelton said. “It allows me to share my passion with each senator.”
Now that he is LVP, Whelton has a heavy influence on what topics the senate pursues. The first issue he would like to tackle deals with academic advising.
“I think it’s essential that we get some type of legislation that holds the administration accountable about academic advising,” Whelton said. “Students are frustrated, and that’s not what we should be seeing.”
Thursday night also featured the inauguration of the newly elected Schultz and Executive Vice President Zach Bowman, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Schultz and Bowman came out on top in the controversial general election that featured a ticket that had finished ahead of Schultz–Bowman in the primary but was removed from the ballot after a campaign violation was brought to light. The investigation into the violation delayed the election a week.
MUSG Judiciary Administrator Bekah Newman conducted the swearing in of Schultz and Bowman before the meeting in a short inauguration ceremony. Schultz spoke briefly after being sworn in, encouraging everyone to help raise awareness to students about MUSG.
