DeKALB — The Student Government Association does not plan to appoint a new vice president for the spring semester, consistent with their announcement at their Jan. 23 meeting.
Following former SGA President Ja’Kobe Jones’ resignation in January, Vice President David Rivera accepted the presidency, leaving the office of vice president vacant.
Rivera’s acceptance of the presidency was confirmed at SGA’s Jan. 23 meeting.
“His resignation was effective immediately, but it wasn’t directly applied to the rest of SGA via the senate until that Friday,” Rivera said.
The vice president position will not be filled this semester, according to Nathan Gonzalez.
“In terms of the position of the vice-presidency, that’s probably something that no one should expect to be filled for the remainder of the 57th session,” Gonzalez said.
This was corroborated by Rivera, who said there isn’t enough time to fill the position.
“Right now, there really isn’t a reason to fill in the vice president position,” Rivera said. “For a bigger role, I think we should wait until we have our (fall) elections.”
The vice president assists student organizations with creating and updating constitutions, bylaws and governing documents required for recognition.
“We stop looking through new student organizations for approval right around mid-March,” Gonzalez said. “There’s nothing realistically a student organization can do within the final month or so of the semester.”
Gonzalez expressed that if SGA were to go through the process of filling the vice-president position, it would take around a month.
“In order to do the official paperwork on getting them through – and this is prior to them going up via resolution to the senate, like the interviewing process – that will take at least two weeks or so,” he said. “The HR (Human Resources) process takes about another three to four weeks.”
Human Resource Services’ hiring process entails screening and review of potential candidates for a position, selection and onboarding.
Gonzalez said the HR process works like the normal hiring process for all student employment at NIU.
“It’s the same thing as any other student employee. You still have to show your work authorization forms,” Gonzalez said.
He explained that the request to confirm a vice president is an extra request on top of HR’s normal workload, which might not be a high priority for them since it is unpaid work.
“From what I know historically, some people have other things. If it’s not on their priority at the current moment, then they’ll still go through the process but they won’t put in the hours, or if they do put in the hours, it’s a little bit of hours,” Gonzalez said. “During that entire time, they (HR) are not being compensated for any time they are providing to SGA. We can’t assure them any sort of back-pay.”
Despite the long process, Gonzalez understands HR’s perspective.
“I understand they also have other work commitments that they’ve got to do, that’s a part of their normal workflow,” Gonzalez said.
The responsibilities of the vice president will be divided between the president, the treasurer and the senate speaker for this spring semester. Elections for the new vice president of SGA will be held in fall 2026.
