“I’m very excited to be able to start out,” Currier said. “I’ve learned a lot already this year and I’m really excited to get things organized, get things back up to par, and serve the assembly.”

McDonald became chairperson pro-tempore when the previous chairperson, Christopher Kulesza, resigned Feb. 17.

As chairperson pro-tempore, McDonald had to assume the duties of the chairperson while continuing his duties as the internal vice chairperson, or IVC.

With the new role, McDonald said the amount of work he had to do was too much for him at times.

“This is to take the burden off of me of doing two jobs at the same time,” he said. “I felt like chairperson was either impeding my work as IVC or IVC was impeding on me being chairperson.”

McDonald said that as chairperson he has had to sit on more committees and attend meetings, which have taken up a lot of his time.

The IVC has to do lots of paperwork along with knowing various codes and policies, Currier said.

The assembly originally planned to elect a new IVC to help McDonald, but according to the assembly’s code of operations, if it elected a new IVC, that person would simply replace McDonald in both roles.

After looking through the ASMSU Constitution, the assembly discovered it could create new officers, so assembly members created the position of parliamentarian and gave it the duties of the IVC.

“I think it’s good to stay within the code, so I’m glad that it was able to be sorted out even though it appeared messy,” McDonald said.

“But the final result was something within our code and I’m really always against suspending the rules or going against what our code says because otherwise, what kind of standards are you holding if you have a code of operations that you’re not following?”

Assembly members said it was important that the assembly solved the problem by staying within the rules.

“It’s important that we always follow our code,” James Madison representative Mitchell Rivard said. “That’s something that you should always base yourself off of as an organization, especially when we’re representing other people.”

The assembly also passed a bill urging the MSU Board of Trustees to ban animal acts from campus that have received citations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture within the past five years.

The assembly failed to pass a bill supporting a tuition freeze for the 2009-10 academic year.

Rivard, who introduced the bill, said he will introduce more bills to support a tuition freeze.

“We cannot continue to take increases year after year or else there will not be students at this university,” he said.