Administration director proposes USG role changes

Undergraduate Student Government Program Board Finance and Administration Director Hahney Yo proposed several changes to USG administrative positions at the Senate meeting on Tuesday.

Along with altering certain responsibilities for the president and the vice president, Yo also suggested eliminating several positions, a change that she said would increase efficiency and help improve project implementation.

“As a member who is leaving USC, I think that USG can be run more effectively,” Yo said. “And I think these changes can help us be more useful to the student body.”

The roles that Yo proposed changes for span multiple departments. Yo said that under her plan, the vice president would no longer be overseeing the advocacy branch. Instead, there would be a Senior Director of Advocacy in that role.

“The entire advocacy branch is changing,” Yo said. “We are now no longer going to have any assistant directors, [and instead] there will be eight directors who will all be directly working on projects.”

Yo added that the Treasurer would handle all of the USG accounts, which is currently her role — essentially eliminating her position. Yo said that because it might be difficult for the new Treasurer to fulfill both the responsibilities of Treasurer and the responsibilities of Finance and Administration Director, she was also in the process of creating an Excel template for the new Treasurer to adhere to.

Furthermore, Yo said that one of her additional goals for the internal USG position changes was to make communication between the various branches of USG more transparent and efficient. A problem Yo noted from her experience on USG was that there were multiple redundant positions for each responsibility, and as a result, projects would either be over-managed or completely neglected.

“A lot of the changes involve simply condensing the team because a lot of it contains associate directors and assistant directors, which is incredibly inefficient,” Yo said. “And to improve the executive branch’s communication with the students, the vice president will be organizing town halls. The president and vice president will also hold one-on-ones with executive officers to keep both channels open for communication.”

Yo emphasized that her proposal was still subject to change and that she was open to any and all suggestions or recommendations from other students and senators.

Besides Yo’s proposal to change responsibilities and roles within USG, other members of other USG departments also presented their completed and upcoming projects for the 2016-2017 school year. Sen. Daniel Newman presented his plans for spring admit reform and for the smoke-free campus initiative, and Sen. Tyler Matheson noted resolutions he had created to improve date rape testing, sexual assault education, greek community wellness and the counseling center.

“In terms of date rape drug testing, there isn’t a viable solution on campus currently, so over winter break I contacted a lab that could help us with this,” Matheson said. “This is essentially an outsourcing initiative that we can pay $140 for — which is currently a quarter of the current cost — and I’m hoping to see it go through by the end of this semester.”