Today: Mar 28, 2024

SGA discusses future plans for Southern

Members of Student Government at the SGA meeting on Friday, Oct. 14.

Jeniece Roman General Assignment Reporter

The Student Government Association discussed future events after a two week long hiatus last Friday.

The meeting was called to order by Katie Menders, president of SGA, the first topic discussed was the American Student Government Association’s national conference and the possibility of restructuring a few things within Southern’s student government to reflect that.

“We’d like to get more students involved and we like to get more of a focus on student advocacy,” said Menders.

According to Menders, the notes that were taken at the conference were compiled into documents and will be made available to the members of student government.

“It was neat to be able to connect to the different and see how they run because they’re all vastly different,” said Menders.

Finalized applications for elections were made available for six representative at large positions within student government and positions for the class of 2020 officers.

“Election packets are out,” said Nick Charnysh, vice president of SGA, which garnered few cheers from the meeting attendees. The packets contained information about campaigning and the mandatory meeting dates for all those running were announced. Voting will be available on Owl Connect Nov. 7.

Student government has been contacted by the New Haven Alders because they would like to hear input from students before finalizing the shopping plans.

“The alders are interested in revitalizing the area known as Westfield,” said Menders. “They were interested in knowing potentially what resources students would be interested in having over in that area.”

Becky Kurnich, secretary, said there would be having an open forum on food service in room C112 in Engleman. Kurnich said there will be no Chartwells employees present because they do not want that to influence students’ speech.

“It’s an opportunity for the student body to come and talk with us their concern with the food service,” said Kurnich. “There won’t be any management or administration from Chartwells in the room it’s just going to be us talking.”

They will collect the information and hand it over to Chartwells to let them know what is happening but they want people to feel comfortable sharing.

“The reason we don’t want to have management in the room is that we don’t want it to be intimidating for students,” said Kurnich.

Other topics discussed were subcommittees are looking at the aspects of advising and how to improve it, feedback on LEP requirements, extending library hours and announcements of several other upcoming events in the fall semester.

There will be a weeklong campaign to promote Owl Connect as the social media go-to for Southern students. Charnysh said the hope is that it will be like a Facebook for student clubs and activities.

“We’re really looking to utilize it more and get more people on it regularly,” said Charnysh. “So like going on Instagram for some people is like kind of a necessity it’s what we do everyday. So we want Owl Connect to be that social media as well.”

Photo Credit: Palmer Piana – Photo Editor

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