Nidhi Patel and Brianna Hull-Dennis, a junior finance major and senior political science major respectively, were sworn in as the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Vice President of Student Affairs respectively at Student Senate on Wednesday night after the roles have remained empty since elections in the spring.

Patel is excited to plan more events as the Vice President of Academic Affairs.

“I’m very excited to plan some events, I was obviously very new to this,” Patel said. “But I was talking to Lucy and I talked to the former VPAA too, and there were a lot of events that the former VPAA did that I want to carry over. There’s so few events that I want to add myself. I will definitely be doing a ‘Sending a thank you note to a professor’ event.”

Patel is also excited to be more active in Student Government.

“I definitely want to be a very active member in Student Government,” Patel said. “I didn’t talk much today because it was my first day but I hope to be more involved. And I also hope to make everyone’s life easier a little bit. I know Lucy probably was very stressed, not having a position filled. And I’m also just very excited to be part of the team myself. And do these events, which I actually have experienced setting up weddings and other kinds of events. I’m very excited to do it for my university.”

Hull-Dennis is excited to see both the flip side of Student Senate after being a senator for one year.

“I have quite a few goals as far as social media initiatives just to get people more engaged with Student Government and the work that we do,” Hull-Dennis said. “I think a lot of people know about the existence of Student Government, but not necessarily how fundamental they are to instrumenting the organizations and the connections with these organizations. I want to incentivize organizations to be more engaged on campus by doing something to show appreciation towards them and also collaborate more amongst organizations and get them to work together. I definitely want to take an initiative to consider mental health a bit more. I’m hosting those events as well as sexual assault awareness. A great thing for this semester is helping these organizations get funding. A lot of organizations are working from the ground up with fundraising.”

The senate approved a new Registered Student Organization, RSO, Math Club on Wednesday night by 13-0-2.

Senators Amberly McDonnell, an engineering technology major, and Tori Cushshon abstained from voting. Cushshon is a mathematics major and abstained due to potential conflict of interest. 

McDonnell said there were too many unanswered questions for the Math Club.

Math Club meetings are weekly at 6 p.m. in Old Main Room 3030. 

Prabin Karki, a mathematics major and president of the Math Club, said the club is for discussing mathematical ideas that are not talked about in the classroom.

“I would say a place to talk about ideas and different obviously mathematical ideas that don’t generally talk in the classroom,” Karki said. “So puzzles and everything that the professors don’t tend to talk about in the classroom as much.”

Katja Benz can be reached at 581-2812 or at kkbenz@eiu.edu.