Chief of Staff
As you may know, the ASUO Executive hired a new Chief-of-Staff from within, without a search as dictated by their governing documents, the Green Tape Notebook. Because they received a bypass approval from the ASUO Programs Administrator (also on the Executive staff, for the record), they were technically within the rules with their action.
Is what they did shady? Sure. Ben Eckstein, the newly-appointed Chief-of-Staff, won’t begin work for another couple days. When the executive is citing timely transitions as the reason for appointing from within instead of going through a formal hiring process, this raises a red flag.
But it was within the rules. If someone wants to change the rules that allow the Programs Administrator to allow programs to bypass hiring processes, they should. At very least, they should stop texting me asking me to write about it. Because honestly, there isn’t much to write.
The turnaround on that position was only about a week or so from when they announced Conrad had left – normally you keep hiring open for at least a few weeks during a truly open hiring process. It’s still expedited even if they’re waiting until after the Voter Reg deadline for Ben to “officially” take office.
Only shady for the exec’s reasoning. Other than that, totally fine. People are just butt-hurt that they didn’t get the chance to be in the position.
And the position has less teeth than it used to. I’m more curious to see who they hire as Political Director.
Especially because it conforms to the letter of the law, I’m struggling to understand why exactly this is “shady” beyond the fact that the Programs Admin is on Executive Staff, which only matters if you think that the PA would have an issue with this if they WEREN’T part of Exec.
There’s an easy and obvious analogue to this in national politics – when Rahm Emanuel left as Obama’s COS, nobody even batted an eye when they hired from within to promote Pete Rouse. And why would they? COS is primarily charged with managing staff – it makes sense you would hire from within for that position, especially when that person went through the hiring process just a few months ago.
Like you said, this seems like a non-issue.