Sumter to stay another semester

As a temporary resolution to the issue of term duration, senior Cody Sumter will continue his duties as student representative to the Board of Governors.

"We got a phone call from the Governor's office on Thursday morning, and he is extending Cody's term until December," Student Senate President JoEllen Flanagan said. "We still are going to go ahead and take applications, and they will still be due Friday, but we won't be doing interviews until September or August."

The student representative to the Board of Governors serves a two-year term. During that time, the representative's job is to voice students' opinions on all issues that come to the Board of Governors. Sumter's term began in March 2008 and was scheduled to end in January 2009.

Sumter said that he was very excited to find out he will be able to finish his term.

"I'm glad he's going to be around and gets to finish his term," Flanagan said. "He deserves that. I feel bad for the people that applied because they thought they would have a shorter term, so that did hurt our pool of applicants when we found out. Even now if you are a sophomore, now you'd be put into a fifth year."

Sumter said the committee has received many applications from qualified applicants even for having such short notice.

"We trimmed down the application, which is usually pretty hefty, and there was a much shorter window for applications," Sumter said. "Applications are usually up for a month or so, and we had them up for two weeks. And usually the committee would have several weeks to deliberate. In this case we were planning on locking everyone in a room next weekend and not let[ting] them leave until we concluded who the three candidates would be."