Vice President of Programming returns to Senate E-Board

By CJ Gates and Robert Creenan

Beginning this week, the position of Vice President of Programming returned as  a part of the Undergraduate Student Association’s E-Board. The Student Programming Board became a team of 14 Executive Board officers and a general body, headed up by the Vice President of Programming, after the dissolution of the office of Campus Programming and Leadership Development in 2014. Last year, through the work of former Student Programming Board Chair Emmalene Carberry, the position of Vice President of Programming was removed from the USA E-Board and moved to the Cabinet, which carried less responsibilities with the Senate.

“My duties as a member of the USA E-Board began to get in the way of my position as SPB Chair, which, quite frankly, is the more important job in the strange dual role that was ‘VP of Programming’,” Carberry said. “The change in the constitution was made so that whoever held that position could focus his or her attention to the job that needed it – making sure that Canisius’ campus programming is and will continue to be the best it can be and so that that person doesn’t need to get caught up in USA politics.”

With the change to a cabinet position, the SPB chair no longer sat in on Senate meetings, but rather would participate in the weekly cabinet meetings that usually preceded the actual Senate meetings.

Current chair of SPB Kate Anticoli felt that the position on the Senate cabinet was out of place and was the one that came up with the amendment that allowed for the position of Vice President of Programming to be placed back on the Senate E-Board.

“When I am in the Senate cabinet meetings, I listen to [CSA representative] Eric Walsh talk about commuters who are his constituents and [RHA representative] Angelo Licastro talking about residents, I felt out of place because the job of SPB is to plan for all students, so technically all students are my constituents,” Anticoli said. “It didn’t feel right to be separated from the main Senate meetings. Whoever’s in charge of SPB has a huge influence over the student body, much like the Executive Board of USA has, so it’s weird to have those two separated.”

Not only were those changes made, but the chair of SPB’s role went from being part of USA’s decision making process to just sitting in on meetings and not being involved with any of the decision making. The role was now to just simply report on what events SPB was planning for the upcoming weeks.

However, it’s not going to be the same old, same old when it comes to the position of Vice President of Programming. While the title may be the same, Anitcoli has been working with various members of Senate as well as Senate advisor Beth Crvelin, USA President Rich Kubiak and Vice President of Student Organizations Darby Ratliff to ensure a few changes are made to the position.

“While the title is the same, I’ve been working to make a number of changes to the position,” Anitcoli said. “For example, currently, SPB is responsible for programming events for every weekend, but with this position, we can take three or four of those weekends and allow clubs to plan larger events on those days adequate funding and if they have any questions on how to go about planning, they can come to me.

“It’s my hope that the changes to this position will not only lessen the stresses on SPB, but will improve programming for the entire student body and provide support to club leaders when planning events on campus. I encourage all club leaders to reach out to me with any questions or concerns about their programs or programming in general.”