May 2009
After a bitter election in which rivals blamed their campaign tactics for their loss, Emma Kallaway and ASUO Vice President Getachew Kassa took office. Kallaway said they spent “25 to 30 percent, which is actually a good amount” of their time during the first months of their administration on issues they inherited from predecessor Sam Dotters-Katz. Kallaway also appointed an Executive staff largely composed of those who campaigned for her, including president-elect Amelie Rousseau as events coordinator.
June 2009
The first thing Kallaway dealt with was a $13,000 deficit in her office’s budget left behind after a pair of concerts in spring of 2009. One was the appearance of hip-hop group Blue Scholars on the Knight Library memorial quad, and the other was an appearance by author Greg Mortenson in Mac Court. The deficits needed to be repaid to the Cultural Forum, which helped stage the events. Kallaway filled the deficit using money from the ASUO’s spring term Street Faire.

July 2009
Michelle Haley, Kallaway’s opponent from when she ran for president, tried to unseat her. Haley filed a grievance accusing Kallaway of five different charges. The grievance put Kallaway in an awkward position because she also needed to appoint members to the Constitution Court, the body that would determine whether the grievance was valid. Haley’s main grievance charged that Kallaway didn’t turn in her plan for office on time.
August 2009
ASUO accountants discovered a $400,000 budget gap left over after a University employee’s miscalculation. The employee had miscalculated the amount that would be needed to secure a $100 reduction in student fees, an initiative Dotters-Katz created. Kallaway used funds from the ASUO’s reserves to fill the gap and made changes to the ASUO’s governing documents in an effort to prevent it from happening again.
September 2009
Before the beginning of the school year, one of Kallaway’s first moves was to appoint Kelli Horvath as the Oregon Student Association campus organizer. Horvath was a former student body president at Southern Oregon University. Dotters-Katz, wary of the influence he perceived from OSA, eliminated the position during his administration, but Kallaway, a former OSA intern, brought it back.

October 2009
The ASUO Constitution Court, by then including three Kallaway appointees, unanimously dismissed Haley’s grievance against Kallaway. Kallaway said she had taken a hands-off approach to the hiring of the Constitution Court members. The Court declared the evidence Haley presented insufficient to decide on the grievance, and Haley decided against filing an appeal with more evidence.

November 2009
Students spent the summer organizing protests against the University’s attempts to expand its Riverfront Research Park facility. Kallaway began attending the group’s meetings during the summer. By November, she helped push through a resolution in the ASUO Senate opposing the development. Kallaway said she remains optimistic about opposition to expansion; although, the University said it intends to continue its plans for the facility.

December 2009
Kallaway submitted to University President Richard Lariviere plans for changes to the Clark Document, which gives the ASUO power over student fees. During 2009, Dotters-Katz changed the document to make it possible to cut fees mid-year, but because of accounting errors, doing so left the ASUO with deficits. Kallaway’s changes restricted the circumstances under which cutting the fee could happen.
January 2010
Students began protesting against the Pacifica Forum, a group that meets on campus and is criticized because its members invite Holocaust-deniers, racists and anti-Semites to speak. Kallaway supported the protesters. The University removed the group from the EMU. “I can’t thank those student activists enough,” Kallaway said. “Would we have said ‘no’ to the Pacifica Forum one way or the other? Absolutely.”
February 2010
University custodians entered the LGBTQA office in early February to find a swastika spray-painted on the carpet and a computer and television damaged. Kallaway publicly called on Lariviere to increase the University’s multicultural general education credit requirements because of the incident in the LGBTQA. Kallaway created a plan to install security cameras in the EMU afterward.
March 2010
Kallaway and Kassa called upon the ASUO Senate to restore funding to the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, an activist organization Sam Dotters-Katz stripped funding from in 2009. However, the Senate submitted a budget in March with no funding provided for OSPIRG, and Kallaway approved it. “There’s a separation of power,” Kassa said. “There’s a compromise that needs to happen, and unfortunately that didn’t occur.”

April 2010
The ASUO held its election to replace Kallaway, in which she, following tradition for recent ASUO presidents, publicly supported no candidate. The election passed without great controversy, had record voter numbers and took place in less time than in previous years, with two weeks of campaigning instead of three. Kallaway also acted as a panelist in a campus debate between Democratic gubernatorial candidates John Kitzhaber and Bill Bradbury leading up to Oregon’s primary election.

May 2010
Kallaway leaves office Tuesday. She hopes to hand off various policies to successor Rousseau: the creation of a minor in civic engagement spearheaded by Kassa and a University position that would coordinate student environmental groups. The latter involves the use of $31,000 set aside for a graduate teaching fellow to head the ASUO’s internship program, a position Dotters-Katz had used to replace the OSA organizer’s.