The Collegian’s beat reporter for the UPUA, Kevin Cirilli, wrote on Friday about the opposition Gavin Keirans is facing in creating an All-College Cabinet. Keirans, the recently-reelected UPUA President, wants to create a new campus group that will be composed of presidents and representatives from major campus groups.

UPUA voted at its Wednesday night meeting to create an exploratory commission to look into the logistics of creating the cabinet.

Cirilli made sure to interview a figure who you might remember from the second UPUA debate: Kayla McPherson, the president of ARHS.

President of ARHS Disapproves of Cabinet

At that debate, Keirans and Samantha Miller sparred over the All-College Cabinet. One of the highlights was when Keirans and MIller argued over which one of them had Kayla McPherson’s support- to recap, Keirans said McPherson liked it; Miller said oh no she didn’t, and then Keirans read from a text message from McPherson that definitely sounded optimistic about the All-College Cabinet. If it sounds silly, that’s because it was.

McPherson called Keirans “very gracious” for letting her look over his initial All-College Cabinet proposal, but said she’s still not satisfied with his revisions.

“He came back with a better version, but it’s not good enough,” McPherson (junior-international politics and medieval studies) said.

One of McPherson’s main concerns is that the UPUA president would serve as chairman of the group.

“We don’t want it so that the president of UPUA is the leader of this group. There shouldn’t be a leader; we’re all equals. There’s no hierarchy to this. We’re all on the same page,” McPherson said. “The way it looks now, [Keirans] would still be in charge.”

University Park Allocation Committee chairwoman Kendra Carr also came out as against the proposal. She thinks that it will further obfuscate the decisions by an already secretive group.

President of IFC Approves of Cabinet

Arguing against that sentiment, Luke Pierce, president of the IFC, came out in strong support of the idea.

“The argument of a secretive government is a complete bogus argument,” Pierce (junior-economics) said. “This isn’t Gavin establishing some sort of force behind him. This is a way for Gavin to be in better touch with the major organizations on campus.”

Our thoughts

Keirans wants the All-College Cabinet to be umbrellaed under the UPUA but does not want it to have any legislative power– that’s exactly how it should be.

The success of the All-College Cabinet will be successful to the extent that the student body feels connected to it– that means Keirans should reach out to as many groups as possible and make the meetings open to the public.