The Student Assembly approved the nominations of Teresa Knoedler '00 and Jake Shields '99 to fill the positions of student life and administrative and faculty relations chairs respectively at its first meeting of the year last night.
Student Assembly President Josh Green '00 departed from established Assembly tradition this year by soliciting student involvement in selecting the student life committee chair nominee, an influential and well-known post within the Assembly's executive committee.
In past years, the Assembly president nominates all committee positions without an open search.
The Assembly publicized the unique, open nomination process last Spring term and Green selected Knoedler as the eventual nominee.
"I think the process worked very well," Green said. "In the end I talked to 25 or 30 people."
Green said Knoedler stood out because of her "ability to include others in her projects, her creativity and her optimism."
"The belief that she can make a difference certainly made me believe in her," Green said.
Knoedler's only Assembly experience was this Summer term, when she served as vice-chair of the student life committee.
Green said he did not intentionally select a non-Assembly member as the nominee, but most of the students he spoke with about the position were from outside the Assembly.
Knoedler's work this summer included the Assembly's report on student fines -- a topic she said she hoped to continue this year.
"I don't want to let that stagnate," Knoedler said adding she also hopes to continue work on the Conversations series which hosts "forums on difficult topics."
This summer, Knoedler helped work on two forums in the series, one on race relations and another on sexual assault.
Prior to the meeting, the Assembly hosted an informal dinner reception on the Collis porch to introduce new students to the Assembly, welcome returning students and solicit student input on matters the Assembly should pursue.
While close to a hundred students attended the reception, only a handful of suggestions were made, and some were written by current Assembly members.
Among the suggestions were increasing the acceptance of Dash payment system by Hanover businesses and campus vending machines.
