Andrew Velnosky
Staff Reporter
The SGA has begun making changes to its structure that will be implemented in time for next school year. These changes are being made in an effort to better represent the McDaniel student body and to get more students involved. I sat down with SGA Vice President Ben Cowman to discuss the changes:
In order to make SGA membership more representative of the entire student body, the assembly will be abandoning the by-class representation. This means that there will no longer be class presidents, etc. In their place will be community representatives, elected to represent the various residence areas on campus. There will be representatives from Rouzer, Whiteford, North Village, Garden Apartments, and so forth. There will also be a commuter representative. This way, everyone will be sure to know who their representative is and where he or she can be found; instead of the current system where many people have little communication with their representative.
There will also be an executive board consisting of the president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. The board will also include a cabinet of committee chairs, labeled vice presidents, representing the committees. The committees are: SGA Affairs, Academic Affairs, Finance, Communications, College Services, Athletics, and College Activities (which will work closely with CAPBoard).
The other major change to the SGA is the creation of the Organizations Council. The purpose of the council will be to gather representatives from all college organizations together in one place for the planning of campus events, discussion of problems, and sharing of ideas. In this way, organizations can eliminate some of the communication problems that exist with so many clubs and organizations on campus.
SGA president Dave Castle and VP Cowman have been visiting all campus clubs and organizations recently to discuss formation of the council, which has its first meeting on March 30 and will meet once a month after that. The SGA will mandate that the organizations send a representative to the council in order to receive SGA funding, funding that is especially important for small organizations.
Organization representatives will be members of the SGA themselves and can serve on the committees.
The council will also be working on a master calendar- something that currently does not exist. This calendar will be a comprehensive schedule of all campus events and will be created with input from every campus organization. Vice President Cowman also said that he would like to eventually see the calendar posted on the new student intranet so that students could have access to it at their fingertips. With new and very innovative changes on the way, the future looks bright for the SGA. As always, SGA members are willing to talk with anyone who is concerned about the changes or is interested in becoming involved.