It's about that time of year to start the process of electing the LGBTQ+ Student Union's Executive Board for 2020-2021. Our board of directors is the core of our organization as they manage our funding, events, meetings, and more! 

As you read through this post, we highly encourage you to consider nominating yourself or others for any of the below positions through this form here. Additionally, we thank you in advance for your patience as we try our best to make our elections as accessible as possible during remote instruction. Our current board is working on setting up ways to allow you to get to know our nominees and allow for the discussion style elections we usually participate in. We will keep you updated as soon as we know how we plan to move forward.

Here, we'll list every position up for election, their duties outlined in our organization's constitution and by-laws, and comments from the current director. The current director's email will also be listed so that you can contact them with further questions if you have any. Please do not hesitate to reach out as we want to make sure that you have all of the information you need to make your decision.

Current Director: Irene Azuremendi - irene3@umbc.edu

As the Financial Director you are in charge of the budget. This means working with SGA and other on-campus organizations to make sure that the events we have planned over the next semester have the funding and paperwork to exist. You will have to schedule meetings with SABSC and ECS, and learn how to use the surveymonkey budget submission system. Informally, you should also take a proactive stance on organizing or helping out with fundraising too, since you will have the best idea of how much money we have/need.

The Education & Advocacy Director is responsible for handling a lot of our smaller scale events, primarily panels but also including fundraising and small-scale social events, among others. Your job would entail reserving space for events, communicating with different campus departments and organizations for smaller event collaboration, and helping advertise events with appropriate marketing. Additionally, the Education & Advocacy Director runs weekly meetings to lead smaller groups in planning events alongside our community.

Being the Social & Membership Director means being able to plan and hold meetings with students as well as campus faculty and and staff, planning and executing events by keeping up with smaller incremental tasks, and facilitating conversation around potentially sensitive topics in a way that is safe, inclusive, and respectful. If you're organized and love helping people have fun while building community, then Social/Membership Director may be the perfect role for you!

I would describe being the Communications Director as being a combination of a Vice President and a Secretary. Taking meeting minutes and sending out emails/posts for the org are some of your main jobs, but so is being a point of contact and organized delegator when necessary. This role also advises our Social Media Director, an appointed position, on running our various org social media accounts. I won't lie, this is a job that requires a good amount of time management. The individual tasks themselves don't take too long, but letting them pile up can sometimes feel like a lot. If you stay on top of it, though, this is a great position for people who like to work behind the scenes and manage communications!