Last Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023, through power of succession, Kameron Murfitt rose into the position of Vice President of the 111th Senate of the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming (ASUW).
“Stepping into this new position, it really is a massive change for me. But still, I’ve been in this organization long enough to where I have the skills needed, have the institutional knowledge needed, to be an effective vice president, and I am super optimistic continuing forward.”
Vice President Murfitt is traditionally a political science major and minor in international relations, and hopes to use both his education and experience in ASUW to pursue a career in diplomacy work.
Murfitt particularly focussed on his long-running career with ASUW, being elected to Parliamentarian of the First Year Senate of the 109th administration and his time as a Senator and Director of Student Outreach during the 110th administration.
“The First Year Senate needed a lot of changes and so it was rough with retention problems, but towards the end of the administration we got it fixed,” Murfitt said.
“Last year, working with the executive branch, a whole other experience, actually working on projects.”
Murfitt said now that he is in this new leadership position, his main goal is to focus on restoring the culture of ASUW which has led to many recent resignations.
“There’s some difficulties in every administration. But retention rates, people resigning, quitting, and being able to bounce back and continue working on projects of a student body, that’s the job.”
Specifically, Murfitt intends to have committee chair meetings, table meetings with Senate leadership, and working internally to address the minds of ASUW collectively.
“So my approach of trying to change the culture is going to start with the leadership; if we can change the leadership’s culture, then hopefully that could move into the general body.”
In light of the recent resignations from the 111th Senate ASUW President Saber Smith offered some words.
“It’s been incredibly interesting to navigate. Chief of Staff, Vice President, one of my closest friends all resigned within a week or two,” said Smith.
“As ASUW President, I think that it’ll be a fresh new start for better or for worse, hopefully for the better. I think we can do some great things and now going forward, I’ve learned a lot in my term so far. And a lot of that is how to deal with interpersonal conflict, how to navigate situations of directors, and I think we are going to come out of this stronger.”
Saber also sourced his long-running career in ASUW over the last four years as to how he has grown in his leadership position, even calling back to the initial campaign slogan from Spring of 2023.
“Obviously, I was pretty frustrated with the culture [of past ASUW administrations] and that’s why we [Smith and Jessica Petri] said ‘ASUW sucks’ but I really mean the ‘Let’s fix it’ part. I don’t think that’ll happen in one year, and I think with everything going on it kind of illuminates why I ran on that. Definitely want to do the best I can as an individual and as a team too. To make that good culture make it somewhere people want to be.”
