With little more than a month remaining in its 92nd session, Student Congress is looking to fill the speaker position vacated Feb. 7 by Deanna Santoro.
Though speaker nominations and the internal election will not come until Tuesday, representatives said the decision will likely come down to Alex Mills, speaker pro tempore, and Zach De La Rosa, chairman of the rules and judiciary committee.
Before the session ends March 29, the new speaker will preside over the discussion of the annual budget and any nominations made by the student body president.
Mills said the Tuesday vote will not be contentious because of the brevity of the new speaker’s term.
“I don’t expect there to be any factions or disagreements going on,” Mills said. “We’re very close to ending the session. There would be only two more cycles so it’s not really as competitive.”
But McKinney Brown, chairman of the student affairs committee, said the election could follow the trend of the recent campus-wide elections.
“Nothing really in student government seems to be calm anymore,” he said.
Should Mills rise to the role of speaker, Student Congress members said the race to fill his role as speaker pro tempore would be more competitive, as the job would represent a stepping stone to higher positions in the 93rd session, which begins in early April.
Santoro said the group is strong enough that many members could be successful. “There’s a lot of people in Student Congress right now that could do a good job,” she said.
