By RAEGAN NEUFELD
Tiger Media Network
With one official meeting under their belts, Student Government Association President Ella Burrows and Vice President Emma Day are ready for a successful semester.
SGA has a number of events for students to take part in throughout the semester, including weekly meetings, voter registration events, the annual trunk or treat and more. While some have been done before, others, like the Green Event, are new.
Similar to the Big Event, the Green Event will be a day of service for students to participate in, focusing on sustainability and recycling.
“We’ll be doing campus-wide cleanups and other things to benefit the environment around Fort Hays and the Hays community,” Burrows said.
One event that got its start last year and will be continuing is the open forum.
“It’s just a really great opportunity for students to connect with university leaders that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to talk to,” Burrows said. “We can really address lots of student issues that students don’t usually get to talk about with President (Tisa) Mason, the vice presidents and other people in positions of power at the university.”
Connecting with and providing representation for every student at Fort Hays is one of Burrows and Day’s main goals. Part of the goal is already being accomplished with the new international student senate seat and the diversity, equity and inclusion executive staff position, both of which were established last year.
“We just want a very involved campus,” Day said. “So we’ll be promoting activities, partnering with other organizations and clubs, helping out with tabling and just really empowering the students on our campus.”
According to Day, the wealth of returning senators will help in reaching that goal.
“They were very proactive and implemented a lot of initiatives last year, and we’re excited and grateful that they’re back and they can keep building on those,” she said.
In addition to reaching a more diverse group of students, Burrows and Day also hope to continue strengthening communication with other campus organizations, which was a goal of last year’s administration. The campus organizations include faculty senate, staff senate, university leadership and the Fort Hays chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
Burrows wants there to be engagement with student leaders from North Central Kansas Technical College and Northwest Kansas Technical College as well. The two technical colleges began an affiliation with Fort Hays last spring.
“I want to work to create legislation and add things into our bylaws to better all of the institutions, see what we can all learn from each other and engage our students with their students as we work to continue growing those pathways,” she said.
Although Burrows and Day are new to the president and vice president positions, they have been a part of SGA for two years, one as freshmen senators and one as executive staff members.
“I remember our first meeting we walked in with notebooks, we didn’t even know we needed our computers,” Day said. “So it’s been really fun to grow. I think the most important thing that’s helped us is the leadership of the executive teams that came before us. They’re just so willing to help out and inform and answer questions. We’ve just learned a lot.”
Burrows shares a similar sentiment, stating their prior experience has prepared them for this year.
“There’s just so much to learn,” she said. “Having that experience of seeing how the Senate functions, both from the Senate side and then from the executive staff side, really prepared us to take on this role in the best way we possibly can.”
SGA meetings take place at 7 p.m. every Thursday in the Black and Gold Room, unless otherwise scheduled. Information about upcoming events can be found on the SGA Instagram and TigerLink pages.