The Council of Student Organizations (CSO) held the organization’s elections yesterday, February 22 at the Br. Andrew Gonzalez Hall to determine the student organization union’s next chairperson. Inccumbent CSO Vice Chairperson-Internals Julie Anne Santioque won the elections and will consequently succeed outgoing CSO Chairperson Gail Tan.
Santioque will assume the post after the turnover ceremony during the Lasallian Excellence Awards Night. She explains that she cannot promise anything, but she adds that she will do her best and will bank on her experience as a member of the CSO Executive Board this year.
The incoming chairperson won against six other nominees namely: CSO Documentations Assistant Team Head Harold Casanas, Business Management Society President Miggy Gamboa, CSO Budget Assitant Team Head Wilbur Chua, Activity Monitoring Team Assistant Team Head Alghie Garcia, Documentations Team Head Alyanna Mendoza and Lasallian Enrichment Alternative Program LEAP2013 Project Head Justin Sy.
Process
Before the elections, the seven nominees presented their platforms during the union’s scheduled ‘Miting de Avance’ in front of the accredited student organization presidents. Under the rules, two voting procedures occur. When there are more than five candidates, an initial elections is held to reduce the number to five. After, another elections is held to determine the next CSO chairperson who then has the authority to appoint the four nominees to the four other posts in CSO’s executive board namely: executive treasurer, executive secretary, vice chair-internals, vice chair-externals.
By sheer number of votes, Garcia lost the race while Mendoza and Casanas tied for the last slot. Consequently, voting was repeated to determine which candidate would enter into the CSO chairperson elections.
Casanas completed the five slots together with Santioque, Gamboa, Chua and Sy.
Voting for the next CSO chairperson took place after the announcement of the five runners. Santioque won by two votes against her closest opponent Gamboa.
CSO Chairperson Gail Tan is confident that all the finalists would be able to complete their duties. She also highlighted that all the five finalists have clear specializations, and that Santioque will not have a hard time in building her executive board.
The CSO is a union composed of 37 DLSU accredited student organizations, categorized as professional, special interest or socio-civic organizations.
Seven executive teams work under the supervision of the CSO Executive Board to support the preparation, implementation and documentation of the activities of the accredited organizations.
The seven executive teams include documentation, activity processing, budget, publicity and marketing, research and development, civic awareness and responsibility and activity monitoring.
The CSO Executive Board also serves as the coordinating body of the council and oversees the implementation of university-wide activities, which include the Frosh Welcoming (FW), Annual Recruitment Week (ARW), the Lasallian Excellence Awards (LEA), and the LEAP, which is a joint venture between the union and the University Student Government (USG).
