The beginning of a new school year brings syllabi, bathroom votes and elections, elections, e-lec-tions. Last Tuesday, Sept. 7th, the polls opened to select Student Government Association (SGA) senators for each dorm cluster.
Two or three senators from each cluster are elected to represent their peers. Their duties include attending Joint Board with the SGA Cabinet, where they represent their constituents on various issues, and serving on SGA committees.
“We fund most every event that occurs on campus, fund student groups, and we support the student body as advocates within the administration,” SGA President Ben Offenberg ’11 said. “We work on student initiatives [including] adding tetherball poles on campus [and] working with faculty in adding new policies to the faculty handbook such as the Religious Holiday Observance Policy.”
Four of the 17 senator positions did not have decisive winners. Run-off elections were held yesterday in the Loosehead, CND, East and Off-Campus clusters. The winners of those elections will be announced tonight at midnight.
Alex White ’12, who will serve as one of two senators from Smounker, decided to run because of the importance of this year to the College’s future.
“We have a new College president and many changes are undoubtedly coming,” White said. ”Having a lot of student input for these changes is critical.”
One of the issues that he will be focusing on this year is paying for printing.
“Printing release stations are set to go in over fall break and charging for printing could start as soon as the spring semester,” White said. “This has to be fairly done and students must be involved in the decision-making process.”
Colleen Osborne ’13 is Smounker’s other senator this semester and was a senator of Loosehead last semester.
“[I] loved getting involved in listening to people’s voices around the campus and being able to express them in a larger group and actually seeing something being done with them.” Osborne said.
SGA Administrative Coordinator Liz Maltby ’11 agreed that involvement is key.
“A good senator is someone who is interested in student and campus life,” Maltby said. “They should also be willing to talk to constituents from their clusters and voice students’ concerns to Joint Board.”
