Armed with a high percentage of new members, the Student Government Association is ready to face the school year with a new set of goals, as well as continue working on ones set by the organization’s predecessors. 

“We have a significant amount of turnover this year due to high graduation rates within SGA, so we have many new members across the board,” said SGA President Laura Giles. “We have 13 students who are moving up from Freshman Forum this year into both Senate and UPC, which is a great rate. We have 15 brand new members to SGA so far, with fall recruitment still pending.”

Walter Hartley, vice-president for the University Program Council (UPC), a branch of SGA, said he is excited for the new students joining the organization.

“It’s a lot of fresh faces,” he said. “They’re students in other organizations on campus who have great track records.”

Members of SGA sat down to set goals and plan for the upcoming year at their annual retreat, Giles said.

The six main goals proposed for the upcoming year include building campus traditions and spirit, improving campus safety and awareness, implementing green initiatives, increasing funds for the endowed scholarship, leading and promoting civic engagement and service and improving navigation and accessibility.

“There will be many projects that come up throughout the year, but none have been discussed thus far,” she said. “We plan to continue Lion Night and other activities we have had in the past, but we plan to make this year different in many ways throughout each committee.”

As far as UPC goes, Hartley said each committee is focused on setting simple, achievable goals, as opposed to major, elaborate ones.

“Overall, we want to be more transparent within SGA and support the SGA goal of funding the endowed scholarship,” he said. “Each committee will commit one project to this goal this year.

“I really want to push being part of the entire body of SGA and help reach the overall goals this year.”

Members of SGA will continue to work toward their goal of funding the $25,000 endowed scholarship, a goal established in 2011. 

It is the first student-led endowed scholarship initiative, and Giles said she hopes to finish funding the scholarship this year.

“It is up to the individual senators to continue with goals and ideas that they were passionate about last year,” she said. “Some goals take longer than a year to complete and are added back if they are still relevant to the student body. The Endowed Scholarship is still being pursued, and we would love to finish it this year.”

Some students said last year they felt a sense of disconnect with SGA, and Giles said she hopes to fix that in the upcoming year.

“I feel that the students could get this impression if they are not highly engaged on campus,” she said. “We reach out to students, but our outreach can and will be improved this year. We do need the help from the students to be caring and passionate students and want to know what is happening within our school and organization.”

Hartley said he wants SGA to be more transparent with students this year, and that having new members could be a big part of reaching that goal.

“This new group of students can learn to see and think about how all of their decisions affect the student body,” he said.

Giles said student outreach is definitely an internal goal for SGA.

“An internal goal of ours is to be transparent with our fellow students, so we hope to utilize every source we can to let the students know what we are discussing,” she said. “This issue must be resolved in order for our students to feel comfortable with us serving them.”