SG Senate approves AUTO commissioner

The Student Government Senate approved Nicholas Russotto as AUTO Commissioner Nov. 2, after the position was left empty for the first part of the semester.

Former commissioner Cory Ward resigned Aug. 25 due to time constraints and personal reasons.

Russotto spoke to the Senate after SG Comptroller Alan Chang chose him from a pool of applicants. The nomination came from Russotto’s impressive administrative and communication skills, Chang said.

The senators in the SG seemed to feel the same way.

“Despite his lack of experience in the realm of lack of AUTO certification, I think that he will be a great AUTO commissioner,” said Anthony Dunham, proxy for Sen. For Class of 2012 Forrest Young.

Russotto is a sophomore double majoring in music and business in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Kogod School of Business. He also works as an organist and harpist for St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church in Tenleytown. Russotto attributes his administrative and communication experience to his position at the church.

“As assistant organist and assistant director of music, the majority of my time is managing a budget, delegating to underlings and or being assigned tasks from my superiors,” Russotto said.

Now that Russotto has been sworn in as the new AUTO commissioner, he plans to get to work this week. His first plan of action is to find an AUTO program director and a billing director to help him in creating AUTO a more student-accessible program, he said.

“A program director is someone who can help with the bigger picture of things and is someone who can effectively articulate my vision and assist in big picture stuff,” he said. “The billing person needs to make sure that people are being billed correctly and needs to know the agile fleet system better than I do.”

Russotto’s main goal is to make the program “first and foremost accessible,” and to “make it easier for people to be certified,” he said. He wants to ensure there are enough vans to bring people to trains stations and airports and to get further communication from the student body, either through town hall meetings or surveys, he said.

After hearing students’ opinions on the AUTO program, he may have to implement changes like “making it an hourly system instead of a mileage based system,” he said.

Russotto said he is going to move quickly once he gets swipe card access to his office and receives all the information he needs from Chang.

“I feel that it has to be communicated to the student body that AUTO is under new management, and I don’t want to keep that status quo any longer,” he said. “I want to get this off the ground as quickly as possible.”

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