Spring is the season for elections at Saint Louis University, as the Black Student Alliance, The University News and KSLU radio station all recently announced their new leaders for the 2008-2009 school year.

The Black Student Alliance named Tamara Harris as its next president at Iggy’s on Monday, April 7, during the CSO’s “SLU Step” event.

According to current President Aisha Allen, the election process lasted about a month and culminated in formal elections held in the BSA office. As the president-elect, Harris will take office officially on 11:59 p.m. on the last day of the spring 2008 semester.

Harris is a junior in the school of nursing and has been an active member of BSA since her freshman year at SLU.

“I’ve seen [BSA] grow over the past three years, and I wanted to be a bigger part of that growth,” she said.

Harris said her main goal for BSA next year is greater involvement from the SLU community by having different events to promote diversity within the organization.

“I want people to understand that the Black Student Alliance is not just for black students. I’m hoping that we can just reach out to other people and become more of a diverse organization,” Harris said.

Junior Adam Tamburin was selected on March 30 as next year’s editor-in-chief of The University News, after undergoing a lengthy election process, which included an application submission, interview with the current editorial board and approval from the administration.

Tamburin’s ideas for the paper next year center around the recruitment and retention of writers, revamping the website and improving the journalistic quality of the paper.

“It wasn’t so much that I walked through those doors and knew that one day [the EIC] desk would be mine; it was more that I saw the need, and I saw that I could fill the needs that this paper has, especially for next year, and I stepped up,” he said.

Tamburin said he feels confident in becoming editor-in-chief because of his extensive journalistic experience, which includes a journalism internship while abroad in London during the fall 2007 semester and then serving as managing editor of the The University News this semester.

Katie Lewis, the current editor-in-chief, has known Tamburin since high school and, after seeing him progress as a journalist in college, said she feels that he is poised to be her successor.

Lewis did say, however, that this year’s pool of strong applicants made this a difficult decision.

“Obviously I’d worked with [Adam] before, and, because of that past, I know how well suited he is for the job. But this year’s election was really tough; it was tough to decide who to vote for,” Lewis said.

On March 10, KSLU announced that sophomore Kyle Sennish will take over as general manager of the station next year.

“I’ve been doing a lot of work with Courtney, our current general manager, and been going to a lot of meetings that she would generally go to herself so I’ve been almost shadowing her and working with her prior to next year,” Sennish said.

Sennish is currently the director of the Mobile DJ Team and has been an active member of KSLU for the past two years.