Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeStudent Association prepares for fall semester
June 8, 2009 —
Though summer has arrived, Student Association still has its eyes on changing its practices for the fall semester. Topics under consideration include allocations, student organizations and the Battle of the Valleys.
According to Ryan Kanine, SA President, the association’s key responsibility is giving back to the students. Given that SA derives its funding from student tuition, Kanine says he hopes that this year students will get more back.
To achieve this, SA plans to rearrange its budget to allot more to allocations for students and their organizations. Rebecca Griffin, SA’s speaker of the House, agreed, calling allocations “a very important aspect of what SA does.”
“More and more organizations and individuals are becoming aware,” Griffin said, “so there’s a higher demand.”
To handle this, all SA members will familiarize themselves with the acquisition process. In the past, if students were to enter the SA office with questions about allocations, they’d be directed to the chair of the appropriate committee. Griffin said this year will be different.
“We’re going to train all our representatives on how allocations work so if anybody comes into office, they’re going to be able to help.”
According to Kanine, SA’s will even improve its Web presence. Kanine said the SA Web site will soon include frequently asked allocation questions and forms will be rewritten to clarify vague language. Kanine said that in the future, student users could see photos and contact information for SA representatives online, so they know whom to talk to about issues they would like to see addressed.
“We want to put more of a face to the association,” Kanine said.
SA hopes to also offer registered student organizations (RSOs) their own MDrives, a virtual space on University servers to allow access anywhere on campus.
This, Kanine says, will allow for RSO leadership a place to preserve organizational documents and pass them down from year to year. M-Drive access would help organizations to avoid losing charters and bylaws when members graduate.
An M-Drive would allow an RSO to buy its own print balance, so an organization could print documents for its members and not deplete its students’ personal accounts.
Since January SA has worked with the University to make available blue comment cards that students may fill out to have their concerns expressed and listened to. This evaluation system is another topic under SA reconsideration.
During the spring and summer semesters, comment cards are continually completed, collected and read. Each week, Eric Curtis, SA’s Student Concerns committee chair, goes around campus and collects the cards from their drop boxes. He types them up and e-mails the comments to the University’s ombudsman, vice presidents and President Eric R. Gilbertson.
Kanine said he hopes that a part of this comment process can go online. He said that by fall, he expects to see a blog that would allow students to see which comments are being submitted, and how the University administration is addressing each of these.
SA is also planning ahead for the Battle of the Valleys, the annual fundraising competition between SVSU and chef rival Grand Valley State University. SA will donate this year’s proceeds to Saginaw’s Boys and Girls Club, and the event will take place Sept. 7 to Sept. 11.
This timing, Griffin said, will make the Battle a particular challenge this year.
“Not only is it the second week of school, but it’s also the week of Labor Day, so we don’t have classes on Monday and Tuesday.”
But Griffin said that this wouldn’t stop them from holding fundraisers those days. According to her, SA will be ready.
“The whole association over the past year has been improving,” Griffin said, “and we’re really excited about this year.”