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Students Raise Questions About USG Cabinet

While the names of the USG cabinet members have not yet been announced, some students are already questioning the presumed appointments. ATVN's Rafael Garcia has more.

UPDATE | Tuesday, Apr. 7, 2015: The USC Undergraduate Student Government released a longer statement via Facebook addressing the claims that were made on Yik Yak the day after this piece was originally published. In it, they also address a blog on the Huffington Post on the allegations. In it, they express disappointment in outlets, including ATVN, using an anoynmous social application as a source of information. You can read the entire statement here

ATVN agress with USG that Yik Yak is not a credible source and that the original video (above) and text (below) should have used more sources. 

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Some USC students are upset with USG leaders Rini Sampath and Jordan Fowler. This weekend they questioned their decisions, accusing the team of nepotism on the anonymous social media application Yik Yak. 

Many users went on the offensive making posts like: “Nepotism in a student government!? Politicians lying about their campaign platforms?! How unusual!" and "DPS is rumored to be conspiring with former USC candidate, Eheren Elder, in a plot to overthrow USG President Rini Sampath." At least 20 other comments expressed frustration over Sampath's appointments and failure to notify candidates of their rejection.

When ATVN reached out to both members of the Sampath-Fowler team, Pres. Sampath responded with a statement addressing students' claims.

The statement reads: “With a record-high 250 applicants to USG this year, our seven-member executive board was faced with tough decisions. We read every application and conducted hours of interviews to build a cohesive and passionate team. We have full faith that we hand selected the best group to work on an array of impactful projects this upcoming year.”

Some students defended Sampath and posted their support on Yik Yak as well.

“You can call Rini out and dislike her for her actions, but stop with the personal attacks and inappropriate comments. Lets be constructive, but don't bully,” one person said.

It's important to note that Yik Yak users are anonymous, so it's difficult to verify if some comments were posted by the same student. We reached out to Yik Yak to verify the origin of the comments, but the company couldn't comment on the specific case. However, they did say that they have a filter that weeds out comments mentioning people's names and monitor them for defamatory remarks. 

Some students voiced their opinions on the matter, and most of them believe that all people picked out to be part of the cabinet should have previous experience on USG. 

“Make sure that everybody she is hiring she knows them well enough to assess them and hire the best people regardless if they are friends or not,” Kate Dowd said.

"Experience is definitely very important for that position. We need people to know what they are doing to be able to run it well," Spencer Itrich said.

We reached out to former USG President Andrew Menard to compare the make-up of his cabinet--based on previous USG experience--to Sampath's, but he did not respond. 

Both Sampath and Fowler have been active participants within various branches of USG since coming to USC.

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