Raymond Baccari
Editor-in-Chief
Student Community Government have elected Deputy Speaker Thomas Fura as their new speaker. This election was held to fill the vacancy created after then-Speaker, James Torres, won a special election for SCG president at their last meeting.
Alongside Fura, At-Large Parliament Representative April Daignault also ran for the vacant position.
In her pre-election remarks Daignault explained that if elected speaker, one issue she would focus on is addressing the issue of RIC’s food pantry not having enough funding.
“Right now, our food pantry doesn’t have enough funds to sustain itself,” Daignault said. “It does not have the person that they need in charge of the food pantry. They haven’t found someone to fill that position. So without that person, they don’t have people to shop for the food, so what they have right now is very scarce. I want to become your speaker so that way I can have more power to attack problems like the food scarcity on our campus, to help our students who not only just live on campus but students who might commute that also need food from the food pantry.”
In Fura’s pre-election remarks, he explained one of his priorities if elected would be to quickly work to fix SCG’s bylaws.
“As new speaker, I would also like to have a swift advance of the bylaws so we can stop dealing with all this stuff with the college and start focusing on doing things such as events, things like funding organizations,” Fura said.
The bylaws are one of multiple demands that the college wants SCG to address as conversations continue between both parties regarding frozen funding that was first frozen almost 11 months ago.
Fura ended up winning a majority of the votes, and there were no write-in candidates.
“I’m really going to try to put us in a good direction,” Fura said in his post-election remarks. “We’re already in a good direction, I’ll put it in a better one.”
Fura will be speaker-elect until he officially becomes speaker when the spring semester begins. Currently, Torres is still speaker until he ascends to the role of president, which will formally happen after this semester ends since current SCG President, Matthew Thureson is graduating in a couple of weeks.
Since Fura was deputy speaker, this now creates a vacancy for that position, which warrants a special election that is set to occur before the semester ends. There are currently 23 members, so a number of the at-large parliament representatives may decide they want to run for deputy speaker. One of the potential candidates for deputy speaker may end up being At-Large Representative Frank Castello.
During SCG’s meeting after their speaker election, Vice President Asley Corrales announced the winners of the class election runoffs. For the Senior Class of 2023, Madison Holden was elected class vice president and Bianca Lancellotti was elected class secretary. Tristan Lacourse was elected as a write-in candidate for vice president of the Sophomore Class of 2025. SCG are waiting to hear back from Lacourse to see if he’ll accept the position since he was a write-in candidate. Once Lacourse accepts the position, he’ll officially become vice president of that class. For the Freshman Class of 2026, Nilah Dereje was elected class secretary and Miguel Hoyos was elected class treasurer.
For the Sophomore Class of 2025, the positions of secretary and treasurer are still vacant.
In other news, the 2023-2024 budget process for SCG-funded student organizations has started. Step one of the process for all organizations is to pick up their budget request packet from the SCG office located at the Student Union building in room 401. The pick up dates begin from Monday, Dec. 5 until Friday, Dec. 9.
Their office hours from Monday through Thursday are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the office hours for Fridays are from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Those who have additional questions regarding the process can contact SCG’s Treasurer, Fathia Obabiyi, via email at treasurer@ricscg.org.