Summer semester has just started, and cabinet selections are underway for the student government. The second round of interviews began on Monday and continued through Wednesday, the plan is to announce the cabinet picks today, said UCF Student Body President Josh Bolona.
Bolona and Vice President Jad Shalhoub plan to announce the cabinet picks at the first senate meeting of the summer, which will be held at 6 p.m., in the Student Union’s Key West Ballroom.
They decided to do the interviews in two rounds, to get to know the candidates better and because there are many — possibly a record number of candidates — Bolona said.
A total of 136 candidates applied before the April 22 deadline, vying for the 12 available cabinet positions, according to Bolona.
“One of our campaign promises was to get five candidates per position, we exceeded that promise by far,” Bolona said.
Bolona and Shalhoub restructured the cabinet after getting student feedback through an interest form they sent out, which got more than 150 responses, Bolona said.
“Through that data we essentially grouped common things together to ensure we were not missing any student needs, or anything they cared about and through that we created positions,” Bolona said.
They downsized the cabinet from 16 to 12 positions and assigned each cabinet member a director role with the ability to create committees under them. This opens more leadership opportunities for students, Bolona said. The previous setup assigned to some members the director position and some were coordinators.
“We want student leaders, people that are passionate about serving leadership, care about UCF and they just happen to specialize in a particular position,” Bolona said.
According to Bolona, choosing the cabinet out would be very challenging given the number of qualified applicants, but the plan is to choose a group that can work together as a team.
“We want to assemble a team of the best of the best, it’s definitely a tough decision, but that’s a good problem to have,” Bolona said
