The Undergraduate Student Government officially swore in its new members Sunday night, while announcing awards for “most dedicated,” “most spirited,” “most valuable” and “council member of the year.”

The new executive board consists of President Jenna Johnson, Executive Vice President Sean Ness, Vice President of Academic Affairs Sarah Moede, Vice President of Public Relations Megan Matheny and Vice President of Administrative Affairs Kayla Gardner.  

Johnson said she was excited about her new position and is impressed by all of the new members.

“I extremely excited and honored to be elected to this position,” Johnson said. “We have a great E-board this year, so I’m really excited see what we can do.”

Among the awards, Jesse Stock won “most dedicated council member,” Ben Dymit won “most spirited council member.” “Most valuable council member” went to Michelle Starkweather and Louis Sand took home the “council member of the year” honor.

Sand said he was surprised and honored.

“I mean, I obviously don’t do it for the rewards, but you know, I’m interested in serving and the work, so it was really surprising and really cool,” Sand said.

Sand was also excited to see all of the USG members officially sign his constitution.

In terms of financing, women’s rugby and UST College Republicans got their conference and competition request.

Vice president Sean Ness said he hopes to make financing one of the priorities on next year’s agenda.

“I want to make finance one of our main initiatives,” Ness said. “One that will look at, first of all, tuition and ways that we can work with administration to see why it keeps increasing and if there’s anything that we can do to try and keep it down.”

Kayla Bengtson can be reached at beng2004@stthomas.edu.