USG announces executive cabinet

During last night’s Senate meeting, USG announced the new executive cabinet appointments for the 2015-2016 academic year.

President Rini Sampath and Vice President Jordan Fowler began their presentation by describing the selection process for the cabinet positions. In the evaluation procedures, seven executive board members read 200-plus applications. After the first cut, 140 applicants remained, each of whom received an eight to 15-minute interview. Interviews focused on questions gauging the “vision, capability and skill” of each applicant.

The new advocacy directors include Brianna Thorpe, Moira Turner, Eric Miller, Maariyah Patel, Austin Dunn and Christine Hasrouni.

The new senior advisor is Alana Victor, a former Annenberg Radio News reporter, a blog writer and former editor at the Daily Trojan and former Kappa Alpha Theta chief operating officer.

The new executive assistants are Donielle Bunyard and Jacqueline Jabarian.

The new secretary is Amy Perez and the new parliamentarian is Holly Bard.

The new funding directors include Jennifer Wu, Samantha Cheng, Matt Linton, Stephen Chu and Christian Edwards.

The new communication directors include Paul Samaha, Frank Fink, Katherin Wilcox, Matt Burke, Ricardo Galvez, Allegra Miller, Morgan Monahan and David Moreno.

New Program Board appointments include Joseph Chen, Daniel Zhu, Kyle Herman, Beverly Pham, Josh Chang, Katya Sutil, Kathryn Kelly, Michael Iluma, Katherine Wang, Devin Trabant, Leo Zhao, Tyler Evans, Amy Lee, Judah Joseph, Caitilin Harriford, Zoe Willis, Maggi Yang, Caitlin Tran, Chelsea Zhang, Elizabeth Bricker, Jade Shi, Rona Sheen, Maya Getter, Amanda Verdadero and Cole Karaba.

Controversy around the cabinet selection process arose after some submissions on the anonymous bulletin board application Yik-Yak accused the selections of eliciting “nepotism.”  An Annenberg TV News story and a Huffington Post blog by USC freshman Lani Renaldo both reported on these allegations, citing the anonymous submissions on the app as a primary source.

Renaldo claimed in her blog post that the Sampath and Fowler were involved in “vote-buying, corruption and nepotism,” and that the USG student body lacks interest in the election cycle.

Such claims, however, were denied at length in a USG official statement, which was released via Facebook on Tuesday evening.

“Yik Yak is not a credible source of information,” the statement read. “While the application can provide comedic entertainment, the platform is often used for students to spread cruel rumors about others.”

The statement also accused Renaldo of making libelous claims.

Following the Senate meeting, Sampath and Fowler discussed the complaints.

“Some of my closest friends applied and did not get in,” Fowler said. “They were people on our campaign that we didn’t choose, volunteers that campaigned for hours on Trousdale that did not get selected. And there were also newcomers that made it because they were qualified. For two weeks we held interviews from 6 to 11 p.m. So if that isn’t a commitment to impartiality, I don’t know what is.”

Sampath and Fowler said the controversy was potentially fueled by applicants who did not receive an appointment. Even those who did not get appointments, however, could still get involved with USG and move their way up the ladder, they said.

Fowler also stressed that controversies like this are to be expected.

“It boils down to the fact that every time you make a strong stand for something people will oppose. You can’t make decisions without gaining opponents,” Fowler said.

Sampath also highlighted the counterproductivity of such controversies.

“I just want everyone to know that we are here to work for our peers,” Sampath said. “The more time we have to [spend dealing] with this controversy, the less time we have to work on USG. All that time we spent writing the statement against the slanderous remarks was time that we could’ve used to organize events and programs for students.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Alana Victor holds positions at Annenberg Radio News and Kappa Alpha Theta. Victor no longer holds these positions. The Daily Trojan regrets the error.