Starting this year, the treasurer for the Wesleyan Council of Student Affairs (WCSA) will be appointed by current WCSA members, instead of elected by the student body.
Sophomore treasurer Sam Schurer said the change was made because an election was “a little bit too risky.”
“We wanted to avoid anyone being elected that wasn’t necessarily qualified, and so this is just kind of another level of security,” Schurer said.
Junior Emma Drongowski, newly elected vice president, said the treasurer needs to have special knowledge of the software WCSA uses and know general accounting. In the past, treasurers have not always had the necessary expertise and “the position suffered for it.”
The decision to make treasurer an appointed position was made about a month ago during a full body meeting, though the idea was “tossed around” for awhile, said senior President Lauren Holler, who was the treasurer two years ago.
She said having to run in an election can be intimidating for students, and in past years sometimes only one person ran for treasurer.
“Seeing that there’s not a lot of candidate turnout for that position, generally we thought it would be better to make it an application so that maybe more people would be encouraged to apply,” Holler said.
Typically, WCSA members hold their positions from January to December. Schurer said he was appointed at the end of last semester because the previous treasurer, Connor Latz, is not on campus this semester.
Holler said having to replace Latz halfway through his term did not really impact WCSA’s decision to appoint treasurers from now on and said she believes Schurer has done a great job as treasurer.
She said having a treasurer who has experience with making budgets is important because WCSA has three different budgets to make: one for clubs and organizations, one for special initiatives, and one for WCSA’s operational expenses.
“We would really like to just get cleaner, more precise budgets,” Holler said. “We feel that if there’s someone who was appointed who has different qualifications or better knowledge of excel, or things like that, they might be able to do that.”
Schurer said it is becoming even more important that WCSA funds be handled properly.
“The number of students we have is going down, so the amount of money we have to work with is going down,” Schurer said. “Meanwhile, the number of active clubs on campus is going up, and so, especially with that tightening, we wanted to make sure everything is being done responsibly.”
Schurer said WCSA had been considering developing an internship for someone who would “handle everything on more of an accounting end” but they decided to not do that this year, so the WCSA treasurer remains an unpaid position.
The application for WCSA treasurer can be found at wsca.owu.edu and should be submitted to wcsaexec@owu.edu. The deadline is Nov. 21.