Associated Students Inc. (ASI) discussed potential options to fill the vacant president position during its July 20 informational meeting.

On July 15, Cinthya Arriaga-Sanchez and ASI senators Jasmine Sevilla and Samantha Snow resigned from their respective positions for the upcoming 2022-23 academic year, according to James D. Martinez, ASI director of operations­

“Due to the CSU requirements, there is a GPA requirement that every leader has to uphold, and that is a 2.0 GPA or higher, unfortunately, those requirements were not met,” said Karen Carrillo, executive vice president (EVP).

Carrillo currently serves as the interim and acting president. 

She presented three recommendations from the executive board to the senate which were “in the best interest of the senate.”

The first recommendation presented follows the ASI line of succession, in which the EVP would take office if the senate is in favor and if the EVP accepts the position.

Carrillo said that she will continue to serve as the interim president, but if the senate were to take this option, she would refuse the presidential seat.

“When I first ran for EVP, my whole heart and mindset was to serve you, the senate, as your guys’ executive vice president,” she said. 

If Carrillo does not fill the vacancy, the next in the line of succession is the Vice President of Finance Gabriel Parra, who was unable to attend the special meeting and provided a statement to ASI.

Parra said he would remove his name for consideration due to factors in his personal and social life. He expressed that he is “currently not comfortable taking on such a demanding role.”

Vice President of External Affairs Caroline Alvarez would be next in line if the vice president of finance refuses the position. Alvarez said she is open to putting her name out as the prospective candidate for presidency if the senate were to follow the line of succession.

“This is my second year [as VPEX] and I really enjoyed it last year, and I looked forward to doing it again this year,” Alvarez said. “But then, unfortunately, this circumstance did come up, and I thought that it would be easier for me to fill that role being that I am a veteran to the executive committee.”

Martinez noted that it is not unprecedented that those in the line of succession may refuse to be elevated as president. 

During the disqualification of a president-elect in 2020, former EVP Hisham Qutob only served as interim ASI president and did not want to be elevated in position, according to Martinez.

Carrillo said the second recommendation for the senate is to appoint the “next qualified candidate” from the special presidential election held during the spring 2022 semester, Aidan Garaygordobil. 

If Garaygordobil accepts the position, he would be appointed as ASI president.

The third recommendation presented was another special election process, which would occur during the fall semester. 

Martinez said that, according to ASI bylaws, the process would take about 60 to 90 days. This would mean a president would not be selected until later into the fall 2022 semester.

“This did happen before about two or three years ago when a presidential candidate that won was disqualified from the office of the president, and they had to have a special election in order to fill that position, and that was that position was not filled until about late October,” he said.

Due to the previous special presidential election being held to avoid entering the upcoming semester without a sitting president, Martinez said the executive board suggested that this option was not the best solution to fill the vacancy.

In particular, Martinez highlighted that in the previous spring general election and special election ASI became aware of outside political organizations from “both sides of the aisle” looking into supporting presidential candidates.

“Because special elections, particularly if we go back through our election history, tend to have a low voter turnout, it’s really easy for outside interests to influence that,” he said. “Even though the last cohort did their due diligence and putting provisions in the election code to prevent outside influence from our elections as much as possible.”

Other ASI senator vacancies will be handled once the academic year begins, and applications will be pushed out at the start of the fall semester.

Carrillo said the senate will vote on what decision will be made during a special meeting on July 27 from 4-6 p.m.