Drum roll please.

Next year’s Veishea general co-chairs are: Ben Dohrmann and Kathryn Whitaker.

A committee made of university and community officials, Veishea advisers and former Veishea co-chairs chose Dohrmann, a junior in agricultural business, and Whitaker, a graduate student in agricultural education and studies, from a field of five candidates at a meeting Monday night, said Terri Houston, one of Veishea’s faculty advisers.

“We looked for experience, their knowledge of Veishea and whether they had a vision of what Veishea stood for. We were looking for maturity and whether they would be able to represent the organization as well as the university,” Houston said.

The candidates were asked to provide a proposal about areas of Veishea they wanted to change, revisit or restructure, Houston said. After individual interviews, the committee made a consensus decision about which two applicants to chose for the positions.

Houston said there was some discussion of having “tri-chairs” for Veishea 1998, but the committee decided that the co-chair system was better.

Dohrmann has been involved with Veishea for three years.

He said he served on the Marketing Committee as a freshman, was a marketing co-chairman as a sophomore and this year he served as co-chairman of the Entertainment Committee.

Much of a general co-chair’s job involves public relations and working with the media, city officials, university officials and the Veishea Executive Committee, Dohrmann said.

Dohrmann said he and Whitaker will meet with ISU administrative personnel and solicit corporate sponsors during the summer months.

In the fall, they will select an Executive Committee. Dohrmann said he wants to “pick out some committee members who did very well last year and try to have them move up to the executive [level].”

Dohrmann said he does not plan to make any large-scale changes in Veishea at this point.

“There will be some committee restructuring, but nothing major. We just leave it in the hands of the students who are involved.”

Whitaker said she, too, is looking forward to running next year’s Veishea celebration. “I’m very flattered and very honored. It’s a big position and it comes with a lot of responsibility.”

Dohrmann and Whitaker’s selection comes at an uneasy time for Veishea. Iowa State’s Veishea Advisory Council will soon make a recommendation to ISU President Martin Jischke about the 75-year-old celebration’s future in light of Uri Sellers’ April 20 murder.

ISU officials have said something must be done to combat Veishea’s alcohol problem. More than 500 citations were issued or arrests were made by local law enforcement agencies during this year’s Veishea celebration. And police say Sellers was killed because he, and others, wouldn’t let two Fort Dodge men into a party at Adelante Fraternity.