The Spanish and Latino Student Association is having its annual officer elections at 5 p.m. this Thursday in the Student Multicultural Center.

All students are invited to listen to the platforms of the students running for office, but only active members are allowed to vote. S.A.L.S.A. has more than 50 members, but only 15 to 20 are eligible to vote according to Natalia Roman, president of S.A.L.S.A.

“Our active members are those who pay their membership dues and attend a minimum of five mass meetings,” Roman said. “Those members are eligible to vote and run so that way we can make sure the students who are voting and running actually know how the organization works.”

Students have a one week-long window to be nominated to run for office. They can nominate themselves or they can be nominated by someone else for one or more positions.

S.A.L.S.A. has six board positions: president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, event programmer and public relations. Students who are running want to have high involvement in the organization according to Roman which is why there are three students running for president as well as vice president.

All other positions have one student running for them except for treasurer which has zero. Once the new board is appointed, they will be able to appoint a new treasure. Until that happens, their board will consist of only five members.   

Before members vote on the new board, nominees will present their platforms at the meeting this week followed by a question and answer session with the audience. Voting takes place immediately after the platform speeches are given.

After serving on the board for two years, Roman said it helped her develop leadership skills.

“I’ve learned to allow people (in leadership positions) to do as much or as little as they need to do in order to shine,” Roman said.  “Before I used to be very kind of self-centered, I thought ‘I know how to do it better, I can do it all by myself and just get it out of the way because it’s easier, but that’s not leadership. I had to learn how to calm that down and realize that if you’re not allowing other people to do it then they’re never going to learn.”

She has high hopes for what the new board can accomplish as S.A.L.S.A. continues to grow.

“It’s (S.A.L.S.A.) grown so much in the past two years that I’ve been part of it (the board) and there’s so much now that can be done with it when I started,” Roman said.

Join S.A.L.S.A. in the Student Multicultural Center to hear the speeches of the future board members.