The chair position that Celso Baez left vacant when he resigned from the Student Government Association is now filled.

Executive Class Senator Zachary Peal was appointed as the Chair of Intergovernmental Affairs Feb. after nearly unanimous approval from the senate. Two senators, Leigh Anne Winger of the sophomore class and Curran Kelley of Dujarie Hall, abstained from voting.

Baez’s temporary replacement, Executive Senator of the Schools Eric Bustos, said at the Thursday senate meeting that he thinks Peal will make a great IGA chair. Bustos declined to take the chair position full-time because of other commitments.

As the new chair of IGA, which typically focuses on making changes within the association, Peal said that he would like IGA to concentrate less on internal affairs and more on interacting with students and helping to write legislation that will benefit students. He will encourage other IGA members to attend meetings of the other two SGA committees, Student Outreach and Legislative Initiatives, which addresses changes to the campus at large.

“IGA has gotten so bogged down with internal affairs that a lot of students perceive SGA to have lost touch with them, which I don’t think is entirely true,” Peal said. “But I do agree that it’s not good for SGA or the student body to spend so much time looking inward.”

Though Peal spent the beginning of this semester and all of last semester in Student Outreach, he has been in IGA before and spent part of the spring last year restructuring the association. His changes downsized the three vice presidencies to just one and added the three chairs in their place.

As IGA chair, he also plans to compile a comprehensive record of all of the legislation written by SGA members in the past few years so that students can see if their concerns have been addressed or if they need to bring them up again in a senate meeting.

“I want [students] to have documentation of why a particular bill or initiative failed or even just for them to see that something about an issue they have already exists, if they didn’t know about it,” Peal said.

His move to IGA chair is the latest in a trail of reshuffled senators following resignation from the association. When Blanca Garcia left the presidency last fall, vice president Krista Heiden was bumped into the top job. Heiden’s promotion resulted in a vacancy in her previous position that Noah Corn filled after winning a special election.