By SAM STEPHENSON
News Editor
Larry Hailsham,’15, and Autumn Vogel,’15, next year’s ASG President and Vice President, respectively, have been instated a semester early into their new ASG positions due to ASG President Kevin Crook,’15 voluntarily stepping down.
During the ASG meeting on Feb. 25, Crooks announced that he would be stepping down due to an honor-code violation. Crooks felt that ASG must be transparent with the community and that as president, it was his duty to let the community know exactly why he was stepping down.
“At the end of last semester I was caught for plagiarizing on a final exam, due to that, it’s not fair for me to represent the student body in this way when I didn’t hold myself accountable for one of the most important things about this institution,” Crooks said.
Though Crooks is no longer ASG president, he is still in contact with the ASG cabinet members and senators.
“I’m still going to be here and I still talk to Larry and Autumn almost every day about how things are going,” Crooks said. “They’ve been continuing things that Larry and I started and building upon them.”
Hailsham said that holding the new position was strange because neither Autumn or himself were expecting to be in the position that early.
“I think if there was anything that Kevin did when he resigned, he motivated people to continue to be vested in the success of ASG,” Hailsham said. “Me and Autumn took that as our charge to really try and work for the rest of the year and the rest of our term next year to make sure that ASG does things.”
Brogan McGowan,’15, current ASG chief of staff, said that the advantage of the early reinstatement is that Hailsham and Vogel will be able to start implementing things from their platforms early and start working out specific kings that are going to help with functionality next year.
“What we’re focusing on right now is finishing off on a strong note and the little things that we can do that aren’t as big as improving community,” Hailsham said. “We’re going to start doing the smaller things now so when we get to the fall of 2014 we are able to do the big things and really focus on doing them right.”
The little things Hailsham mentioned are more logistical elements to ASG then big time policy changes.
“[We’re] really trying to grab a hold of our bylaws and understand what’s going on there; getting those up to date; figuring out attendance policies and hold people accountable for that,” Hailsham said. “So just the little functionality things we’re going to hammer out now as opposed to getting that figured out next year.”
McGowan said that in the past, ASG has been seen as more of a fun organization, and Hailsham and Vogel will bring back the seriousness and responsibility that in the long run will set them up well for their term next year.