Photo via Jasmine Stewart
This year has been an eventful one. We’ve had almost all of our Senate Seats filled this year, as well as successful events. In total, we’ve had over 80 senator reports, two very engaging Town Hall meetings, a President’s Lunch, Budgeting Q&A’s — which were hosted by our Treasurer, Kate Spaulding and the rest of the finance committee members, a very eventful and contested Executive Board elections and finally two voting related events hosted with two members of Congress.
Both of our town halls combined had 100+ questions submitted from students prior, as well as during one of the meetings. With some of the concerns addressed, administration had worked towards these issues, such as getting more hand sanitizer stations, and hosting the President’s Lunch, in which further topics were discussed amongst President Fiorentino, Student Government President Catherine Young and students. Some other issues, such as the name change for Schmucker Building, have also been seen and evaluated further for change and improvement.
Our committees have been making changes as well. Starting off, our Bylaw Reviews Committee (chaired by Parliamentarian Brenna McGowan) passed over 20 new and unique organizations this year, including but not limited to, Island Vybz and Out-of-State Student Association. Speaking of new organizations, our Finance Committee (chaired by Treasurer Kate Spaulding) created a New Org Fund, which allows new organizations to request up to $500 dollars for the year, instead of waiting the following year to gain funding. The Finance Committee has also created a new list of deadlines for Budget Requests (which are allocated into the next fiscal year, 2023–2024), in light of student’s concerns of the previous budget request deadline being too soon. They also donated $4,000 to Ramboree and $1000 to the Gender Justice Conference, and had 47 organizations make auxiliary requests.
Speaking of changes, we held our Executive Board Elections during March 2023. We had four of six positions contested, and a total of 10 students running to be next in line to succeed the current SGA Executive Board. Over 700 votes were submitted through D2L, where voting took place. With that, our new Executive Board Elects for the 2023–24 School Year are:
- Alex Clancy, President
- Sierra Irving, Vice-President
- Jasmine Stewart, Treasurer
- Aliza Greenfield, Secretary
- Keilah Hanley, Parliamentarian
- Annie Wineka, Public Relations
Some of our Senators had the opportunity to travel to the Board of Student Government Presidents Conference, which was held from March 25 through the 27 at California, P.A. The Board of Student Government Presidents are one of the communities within the PASSHE Schools that bring all of the Student Government Associations together to discuss different progresses they have made within the school year. The theme of the conference this year was “Facing the Future — Together”, where student leaders discussed how to become better student advocates, as well as event planning and learning from others. The Senators brought back new innovative ideas to implement into next year’s Student Government.
Want to bring change on campus? Want to be an advocate for your student body? Join us for our Senator Elections on May 2 at 7 p.m., located in Sykes Student Union Room 115!
Jasmine Stewart is a second-year Statistics major and Public Relations Officer for SGA. JS980538@wcupa.edu