Although the spring semester has just begun, SGA has been quick to spring into action, making plans and organizing projects for this semester.
According to President Rebecca Peach, the members of SGA have a few ongoing projects they are working on, but their main focus is currently fixated on finances.
“The primary thing that we’re trying to do right now is figure out our budget,” Peach said. “We still have a decent amount of money left in the budget that we can spend, so we’re trying to figure out what we want to do. As always, we are continuing our recycling initiative.”
Although the recycling initiative has been at the center of Peach’s platform this school year, Peach explained that there have been a few unexpected delays.
“Hopefully we can get common access area for recycling paper out within the next two weeks—that’s my goal,” she said. “There’s been a huge amount of red tape that’s been stopping that. If I get nothing else done, but I get that done, I would be very happy.”
According to Peach, this semester will bring several updates and changes that will benefit the student body. Among those changes is offering more accessible printing for students.
“We are looking at placing printers in student residence halls,” she said. “That is something that may seem counterintuitive to our goal of reducing paper waste; however, we feel that it would mainly displace the current spots for printing and not actually increase the amount of printing. Students typically don’t print because they want to—they print because they are told to by their professors and have to.”
In order to reduce any paper waste of printers, Peach explained that SGA’s goal is to make it easier for students to recycle.
“There will be a paper recycling bin place next to these printers,” she said. “This is all something that we have to work with IT about in order to make sure that those printers can be linked to Papercut to actually be accessible to students.”
Another area on campus that Peach has been looking to revamp is the Dance Barn.
“We’re hoping to tour the Dance Barn and talk to some dancers about small changes that we can make there,” she said. “They were promised that it would be temporary building, but it doesn’t look like it will become less permanent anytime in the near future. We’re hoping that we can help them out with that, even if it’s just by installing curtains so they can actually change there since they have to have for their dance classes.”
Along with the Dance Barn, Peach hopes that SGA will be able to revisit the Mocha Joe’s renovation that took place over the summer.
“We are working on updating the side of Mocha Joe’s that didn’t really get much love in the last round of updates,” said Peach. “We’re ordering the same kind of lights that they have on the side of Mocha’s people actually populate. We are going to be putting in some games hoping to make it more like a student center by featuring student art.”
With the semester reaching full swing, Peach offered a reminder that the campaigning process begins this week for students who are interested in running for SGA president.
“We released forms for students to run for president this week,” she said. “If anybody is interested in running for president or vice president, they should come to the SGA office because we have those ready for them to get filled out.”