ECU student to lead ASG

DURHAM — Running unopposed, familiar faces were elected Saturday to lead next year’s UNC-system Association of Student Governments.

Atul Bhula, a senior at East Carolina University, was elected president. UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore Dakota Williams will take over as senior vice president.

Both candidates have been active members of the organization for several years. Bhula has been a member since 2007. Williams started as a high school delegate representing the N.C. School of Science and Math.

Greg Doucette, outgoing ASG president, said Bhula and Williams have experience and know the fundamentals of the association.

“They know the importance of transparency and accountability,” Doucette said.

Their platform emphasizes keeping executive officers accountable and making sure that they aren’t doing their jobs just for stipends.

This year, officers were paid at the beginning of the month.

Bhula wants to push back paychecks to the end of the month to improve officers’ incentives to work.

When beginning the job, officers will work one month prior to getting paid.

“In doing so, we’ll weed out those people who are just in it for the stipends,” Bhula said.

At the beginning of the year, officers will be asked for their goals and plans for the year. They will be evaluated throughout the year to make sure they are making progress on those goals, Bhula said.

“If I need to fire anybody, I’m going to do it,” he said. “I’m really big on accountability.”

Doucette said he hopes that Bhula will continue to keep ASG united. Rebuilding the organization has been the chief focus of Doucette’s administration.

“The fact that people are here participating is the reason why everything is falling into place,” Doucette said.

“We have people. He needs to go out of his way to make sure that those people stay.”

Williams, who is also treasurer in UNC-CH Student Body President Hogan Medlin’s cabinet, said he hopes to establish budgeting conferences between student body treasurers throughout the system.

This conference is meant to be a collaborative process to help student governments from the different campuses share ideas on how they allocate student funds.

“We have points of our budget that we do very well. We also have points that we don’t do as well. We could sit down with other schools and gain ideas,” Williams said.

Like Bhula, Williams said holding officers accountable was important.

Large stipends are one of the things that help the organization do that, Williams said.

“The role of the senior vice president is to really manage the officers. I hope to do this by staying on them,” Williams said.

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