New student trustee to be selected
Saturday will be a big day for student body president-elect Chris Griffin. He and five other representatives from the USF Tampa campus will attend the annual meeting of the USF System Student Governments (SG) to determine who will next sit on the USF Board of Trustees (BOT) as the student trustee.
The trustee is selected from the three student body presidents-elect.
Though USF Tampa has won the vote several years in a row, USF St. Petersburg student body president Jozef Gherman was chosen last year. He served on the BOT during the 2015-2016 school year.
Since 2012, the voting process has been decidedly fairer to the branch campuses, with a selection process in place to determine the trustee. The campus student body presidents at the time agreed to create a voting body to make the decision.
Each campus has three automatic voting member seats, and for every 10,000 students a campus has, it gets another seat, at a maximum of three extra. With nearly 45,000 students, USF Tampa is the only campus with more than three seats.
From USF Tampa, student body president Andy Rodriguez, student body president-elect Chris Griffin, student body vice president Mike Malanga and SG Chief of Staff Taylor Sanchez will attend, according to the organization of the voting parties.
Also part of the USF Tampa voting party were SG Senate president Kristen Truong and Senate president pro tempore Danish Hasan. However, both are unable to attend and have chosen representatives to attend on their behalf — SG Attorney General Richard LaMura and Senator Aladdin Hiba, respectively.
USF St. Pete will send current student body president Jozef Gherman, SG Senate president Angela Wilson and student body president-elect Ziya Kardas.
USF Sarasota-Manatee will send current student body president Alexander Benishek, SG Senate president Barry Callahan and student body president-elect Andrew Becht.
The 12 voting members will select the student trustee, who will be announced Saturday and begin work on the first day of the term.