By RAEGAN NEUFELD
Tiger Media Network
Ella Burrows and Emma Day are back for a second year as the Student Government Association president and vice president, with hopes of finding more ways to connect with students.
Last year, Burrows and Day worked with their executive staff, student senate and other campus organizations to provide free period products in FHSU’s academic buildings, repaint parking spots and install security cameras in the McMindes Hall, Victor E. Village and Tiger Village parking lots. According to Burrows, these issues came to their attention around September last year, so they are waiting to see what students’ needs will be this year. In the meantime, they are providing more opportunities for communication.
“One of our big pushes this year is going to be finding unique ways to connect with students and make sure that they know how to contact us when they are having problems,” Burrows said.
Currently, their plans involve revamping the SGA social media accounts, hosting events in the Memorial Union and on the Quad to talk to students and continuing the fall and spring open forums.
The connections between senators and executive staff members will also be a focus this year. Day is hoping to foster closer relationships between the members of SGA by adding a social element to the group.
“I think sometimes it’s hard for our students to connect in that way,” Day said. “So we’re going to start doing senate socials and different things, trying to get our senators connected with each other and with us to make sure we have that bond and that open communication.”
In addition to what they accomplished last year, there are still events and projects Burrows and Day wish to see happen, which is why the duo ran for reelection. For example, SGA is hosting the first-ever Green Event this month. It will be a week-long sustainability initiative starting on Monday and ending on the 14th with a day of service, similar to the Big Event.
“The Green Event was something that had been in the works and we wanted to see that go all the way through,” Burrows said. “Both of us are really excited to use our knowledge that we learned from last year and put that into action this year, and hopefully make a lot of progress for our students.”
SGA will also host a First Aid Certification Day in the spring, and continue its work with the Food and Hunger Initiatives to provide a sustainable supply of food to the Tiger Pantry.
“Food insecurity is not something that students should be concerned about, so we’re looking at putting a student on (the Food and Hunger Initiatives) committee that meets to help make sure we have somebody informing us on that,” Day said.
Burrows and Day have a wealth of student government experience going into this year. Before serving as president and vice president last year, they both spent a year as executive staff members and a year as freshmen senators.
“It gives you an opportunity to know where you went wrong and how much more detail you need to put into things,” Day said.
Burrows believes their experience with the procedures will benefit them this year.
“There’s so many procedural things that need to happen in accordance with our governing documents and they’re really easy to miss, so we’re hoping this year that things will run a lot more smoothly since we have everything written down,” she said.
The first SGA meeting of the year is at 7 p.m. tonight in the Memorial Union Ballroom. Information about the meetings can be found on the SGA TigerLink page.
TMN will provide coverage of every meeting.