The newly elected student government took their offices on July 1.

Sean Anderson, Dave Keyes, Cole Rogers, Levi Bulgar and Amanda Raz were elected to their positions on April 19. However, some student government members do not feel as if their positions are truly theirs yet.

“Even though change over was July 1, I still don’t feel that I have the position,” said Dave Keyes, the student vice president for Academic Affairs. ” When I’m sitting up at the exec board then I’ll really be going crazy. “

Cole Rogers, the student vice president for Student Affairs, said that change over is not that big of a deal.

“To be honest it was not that big of a deal,” said Rogers. “July 1 is just kind of an official day, nothing compares to the day of election announcements.”

Keyes disagreed with Rogers.

“The change over is a big deal, but until all of us get things rolling we won’t really know how big it really is,” said Keyes.

Ceci Brinker, director of Student Life at Eastern, said that while the official change over does happen on July 1, for all effective purposes, the change over occurs when the fall semester begins in August.

“Much of their transitioning into to their elected positions will take place in August upon their return to campus,” said Brinker. “They will start the year will an annual student government retreat for all new and returning student government leaders.

Brinker said that Student Body President Sean Anderson has been working with her to plan the First Night event, the fall student government leadership retreat and working to create the ILead Awards of Excellence program, a new RSO recognition program.

While the newly elected student government executive board is preparing to take office in the fall, current student government members have been working on various projects.

The external relations committee, chaired by Senator Mark Bates and Senator Lynne Duzan has met with the mayor, two faculty representatives, two student representatives, two council members and Jill Nilsen, the vice president for External Relations to discuss improving community relations and discussing ways to promote Homecoming.

The recycling committee has added a recycling bin to Booth Library and the senate has been working to fill the open senate seats for fall semester, said Bates.

Current student government members are working with the new executive board in order to form more concrete plans for fall.

“Some of the biggest changes are in the changing of the guard in terms of offices,” said Bates. “The new exec’s can move in at anytime and begin to formulate ideas for the upcoming year. They bring with them some crazy ideas, so they will have to figure out how they will implement them,” said Bates.

While the change over is technically when the new student government takes office, few are actually on campus due to it being summer. Up until change over Keyes was in contact with Student Body President, Sean Anderson.

“We still plan on making a trip down to Charleston to check up on things before the school year starts,” said Keyes.

Rogers has spent the summer organizing plans for Pantherpalooza, the RSO fair sponsored at the beginning of the school year by student government as well as researching RSO funding.

” Being that my job works directly with the students and their organizations it is hard to implement anything over summer vacation, but instead I am just doing preliminary work so that the day I step foot on campus we can start tangible work on these projects,” said Rogers.

Once school starts, Keyes and Rogers plan on pursuing their campaign goals.

Keyes campaign platform focused on having all faculty use WebCT to record student grades, making the grades accessible to students 24 hours a day.

“The main thing I want to focus on is getting all grades on WebCT. WebCT is too valuable of a resource not to use,” said Keyes.

Rogers plans to put together a task force of students and administrators to decide on a definite plan for registered student organization funding, which was one of his big campaign issues.