The Residence Halls Association is ready to form the 2002-03 executive board with the hiring of Melissa Kessler as director of human resources.
Kessler, the association’s Michigan organization communications coordinator, will join President-elect Tim Liss, External Vice President Emily Edick and Internal Vice President John Sturk to fill the top four spots on the executive board.
On April 10, the four will assume full duties for next year.
Kessler, who will receive a $4,204 salary, said she is looking forward to working on the next board.
“I am looking for a group of dedicated individuals,” she said. “I am looking for people who understand this is a job you need to go above and beyond. And I am looking for a lot of creative new ideas.”
She said her main focus during the next few weeks is to create an executive board that works well together.
“I would like to put the focus back on what each position does to serve the residence hall’s students because sometimes that gets lost,” she said. “I plan on sitting down with each executive board member and discussing how their individual position affects the everyday student in the residence halls.”
Kessler said she is going to focus on creating an RHA for the Big Ten.
Liss said diversity among the top four positions will help bring new ideas to the association.
“That is going to be a key aspect of the incoming (executive) board,” Liss said. “There will be different opinions and different views on certain situations and different aspects.
“What’s going to bring us all together is what we are trying to accomplish, what are our goals and what the students want to see happen” he said. “That is going to be our objective no matter who’s on the (executive) board next year.”
RHA will have a restructured executive board, with several positions cut and merged. RHA passed a bill Wednesday to combine the special events director’s and movie director’s jobs.
Executive board members will have a better understanding of the association’s ethics committee since the general assembly passed a bill to redefine the committee’s purpose. An ethics committee to deal with undisclosed personal issues was formed Feb. 20 by the general assembly.
Although Liss said he doesn’t see the need for another committee next year, he said the bill helped define it and cleared up confusion within the association about its purpose.
“Before meeting the purpose and exactly everything behind it and how it worked, kind of left a lot of the general assembly in the dark,” he said. “That was a very worthy addition.”
Justin Komori, the Asian Pacific American Student Organization representative, said he would like to see the ethics committee issue wrapped up this year.
“We need to get that over with and in the past,” he said. “That was part of the policy issues we dealt with (Wednesday) so that this crap doesn’t happen again. We don’t need an ethics committee next year.”
