GSSC Appoints VP of Student Life

The General Studies Student Council appointed Cheryl Berg, GS ’08, as vice president of student life and elected students to be on the Special Assignments Committee at its first meeting of the year.

Due to resignations over the summer and new positions recently created, GSSC was incomplete at the start of the academic year. Erika Gallegos, appointed vice president of student life last spring, announced over the summer that she was unable to commit to GSSC due to her busy class schedule, job, and commuter status.

“We are not about free pizza and water bottles,” Berg said regarding her role on GSSC. “We have people graduating with $90,000 in debt and that’s unacceptable.”

Before she was appointed to vice president of student life, Cheryl Berg already held a position on the current GSSC as student services representative. It is unclear who will fill her old position. Cheryl said she is confident that they will find someone energetic, and she is willing to help whoever he or she may be.

“I want to bring a greater diversity to the kind of programming that we offer to reach a broader range of students,” Berg said about her goals for the position.

“I have 100 percent faith in Cheryl,” GSSC President Niko Cunningham said after Berg was appointed.

Other GSSC members applauded Berg’s appointment to the board. “Cheryl is always one of the first to volunteer and last to leave [an event],” Vice President of Communications Brody Berg said.

Over the summer, Cunningham developed a new area of GSSC, the Special Assignments Committee, in an effort to get more students involved in the council and keep it from being an insular environment. “If you’ve got a passion, or if you’ve got a vision, we will give you the money for that,” Cunningham said.

There are about 20 open positions on the committee including, veterans liaison, parents liaison, inter-school affairs ambassador, secretary/blogger, historian, director of philanthropy, director of multicultural affairs, event catering specialist, photgrapher, and videographer, among others.

Cunningham said he sees these positions as “new tentacles to expand the vision of GS.”

Some students have already been assigned to positions on the committee. Cunningham said that the interview process will last throughout September, and at the end of the month all positions will be announced.

According to Brody Berg, creating such positions “sparks intellectual intensity” among the students and allows them to give back to the council in a variety of ways. The people on this committee will be non-voting members of council.

Shira Lee Segal can be reached at Shira.Lee.Segal@columbiaspectator.com.