Leusner nominated graduate student Ken Girardin for the position of Senate Vice Chair. Despite his limited experience in student government, Girardin stated that he wanted to wait for the right Senate to become involved in student government and he felt that this was that one. “I want to make this stuff happen,” he said, referring to Leusner’s Contract with RPI. Girardin was one of the chief architects of the contract, and helped Leusner a great deal with her campaign.

Girardin felt that one of the most important roles of the vice chair, outside of the description stated in the by-laws, was to connect students with the Senate. One of his proposed ideas to achieve this is to create a “Your RPI” website, which will allow students to have a better relationship with student government. Girardin was approved by the Senate for the position in a 14-0-2 vote.

August Fietkau ’08 was appointed to the position of Chief Information Officer of the Senate. Fietkau’s plans include further work on the Student Senate website and also recruiting more people to help working on it.

Chris Gearns ’08 was appointed as the Parliamentarian of this year’s Student Senate. Dan Horvath ’08 was also reappointed as Treasurer, after serving in that position for two years.

Leusner nominated freshman Lin Yang to take over as chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, and she was approved for the position at the meeting. Yang cited some of her goals as chair to include addressing the honor code, midterm grading, peer advising and the TA system, which had been a staple of Leusner’s campaign. She also hopes to pursue a strong relationship with the Faculty Senate on these issues, and to facilitate communication between the students and faculty.

The Campus Communications Committee will be chaired by Brian Zaik ’09, who cited some of his goals as improving the Student Senate website to include a forum for students, as well as trying to combine news letters from the Union into one larger one so that students will not have to subscribe to so many.

Chase Miller ’10 was appointed as Chair of the Committee on Student Life. One of his major planned projects for next year is a Winterfest, which will include the freezing over of the ’86 Field. Miller also plans to continue the video game tournaments, as well as Pizza with the President. In addition, he hopes to make a spin-off event that would involve pizza with the Senate and E-Board to help bridge the gap between students and the student government.

The Community Relations committee is going to be chaired by Chris D’Angelo ’09, and the Finance, Facilities and Advancement Committee will once again be co-chaired by both Fietkau and Horvath.

Last on the list of appointments for the Senate’s meeting was the Committee on the Judiciary and Student Rights. Jason Rokeach ’08 was again appointed for this position. He hopes to pursue such issues as Troy’s persecuting of students as well as an accountability plan for landlords.

Leusner was very pleased with the new Senate. “I want this to be a very project-based Senate,” she said during the meeting. Leusner later said, “I’m very confident in the appointments. I interviewed all the committee chairs and discussed many plans with them. We plan to tackle a lot and take on a lot of projects.”

Leusner plans to keep close to her Contract with RPI, and has already started to address the parking problems as well as the TA system. “We’ve met with the mayor and have started to try and negotiate about the street cleaning hours,” said Leusner.