Junior Kane Poad has been sworn in as Whitewater Student Government (WSG) president, with former Deputy Speaker Thomas Kind sworn in as Vice President, after former President David Kroeze resigned due to health concerns earlier last week.

The replacements were set in place after Kroeze took a medical withdrawal from the semester, allowing former Vice President Poad to take his position.

“I do however take solace in the fact that Kane Poad is 100 percent qualified and prepared to take over my position,” Kroeze said in an email statement. “I believe it will be a smooth transition and I look forward to seeing what WSG will accomplish moving forward.”  

Transitioning

The possibility of Kroeze’s resignation was an event that the WSG Executive Board and Advisor Jan Bilgan had been aware of for some time before it became a reality. This allowed for preparation, so that the transition was not complicated.

“We knew that there was the potential for change to happen. So we were working through that and making sure that we were going to be in a place, so that if the change happened and when it did that we were ready to go,” Poad said. “Me and the advisor Jan Bilgen have been setting up steps to take if something did happen.”

Former speaker Kind was appointed by Poad and Bilgen, and approved by the Senate because his position as Deputy Speaker was very similar to the position he would be filling.

“So my position previously was the Deputy speaker. Basically, that’s the mean guy of the Senate, but my role is to make sure that the Senate is doing their duties in terms of office hours exedra,” Kind said. “That largely is the same role as the Vice President, except instead of the Senate it’s the E-board.”

Reactions to the change in administration have overall been positive throughout the Executive Board and Senate, and the rest of WSG is ready to move forward and continue working this semester.

“The Executive Board functions in a place where they all do what they’re supposed to do, they’re all hired for experts in their positions, so it was just ‘how can we help’ and it’s been great,” Poad said. “Everyone’s been so helpful, WSG really rallied together so that we still function at the level that we are.”

Changes to Standing Rules

One of the major focuses of Vice President Kind and WSG is working to propose a bill to update the standing rules for the Executive Board, sothey more accurately reflect what WSG represents and practices now

“We’re making some restructures in the E-board part of the standing rules. To make sure that the E-board is best able to serve,” Kind said. “It gives us a little bit more of an open option and allows to follow the rules easier that are currently in place.”

The bills mainly propose changes to WSG’s office hours. The office hours changes do not have to strictly performed in the office, but can be accounted for when senators are working with campus in a way that is part of their job, as long as it is approved by the Vice president.

“It still has a check and balance, the Vice President is in charge of office hours.” Kind said. “So in order to get approval of it being an office hour or take place as that, you do have to have someone say ‘okay you can do that’.”

Moving Forward

The main focus for WSG immediately after the change in leadership was the presidential election and helping students on campus get registered and to go out and vote.

“Our main focus right away has been the election,” Poad said. “It’s in our standing rules that we have to as a student government body we have to help.”

In order for the University to have a polling place on campus, WSG must provide people to help man the polling place and assist voters.

A main focus in election coverage was pushing for pre-registration for many students. For this election, WSG was able to pre-register about 1,000 people by getting information out to campus about how to register and vote early. Because of this, people were able to make it through the lines in about 20 minutes.

“The entire system was almost a model system. It was running so perfectly, everyone that was there was saying they should be using this everywhere around the state,” Kind said. “You hear about most other UW schools, they don’t have anything close to what we did.”

With the election having ended, WSG is beginning to focus on their involvement and programs on campus for the semester.

The first campus program WSG is planning is a sexual assault forum, on Nov. 22 which will include many groups on campus including Freedom Force, Police Services, the Whitewater City Police Department as well as the Chancellor. In addition to the forum, there will be the annual safety walk with these groups.

“We will do what we do each semester which is a safety walk, in which that group will walk around campus and look at different aspects of campus, and see if it’s safe or not,” Poad said. “For example, over by esker there’s a lot of cracks in the ground, which is an issue for students who use wheelchairs.

In addition to the forum and safety walk, WSG will be work with the City of Whitewater to expand the Bike Share Program that was started on campus last year to the city.