The Student Government Association (SGA) discussed the 2016 Fall Forum and as well as their upcoming dinner with University President Ronald J. Daniels at its weekly meeting in the Charles Commons Barber Room on Tuesday, Nov. 1.
The SGA will be having dinner with Daniels on Nov. 2 so they can highlight key issues facing the student body. The three major topics that SGA members will discuss are school spirit, mental health initiatives and the roadmap to diversity.
Executive President Charlie Green outlined the purpose of the dinner.
“[The goal] is mainly to get advice on issues that we can’t get from any other administrators,” Green said. “We save questions for him... that only he can advise us on, such as how can we most efficiently fundraise for the student union. We use him as a consultant.”
Green advised Junior Class Senator Sathvik Namburar, who has been working on the SGA’s efforts to advance mental health initiatives, to ask Daniels for his concrete goals regarding the mental health task force. The Task Force on Mental Health and Well-Being is a temporary task force created in the spring of 2016 that will publish a final report at the end of this year.
However, Senior Class Senator Matthew Brown raised some practical concerns with the SGA’s approach to the dinner, highlighting the time constraint and the pitfalls of the SGA’s dinner with Daniels in previous years.
“I’m still concerned that I don’t see any one thing that we’re trying to gain from this conversation,” Brown said. “But knowing how last year went, where we just talked about the mental health all the time, I want to see if we could come to a consensus as to what we want to get out of this, maybe prioritize one topic, since we do this every year.
Brown stressed the limited amount of time they will have to spend with Daniels during the dinner.
“There’s not a lot of time. We have an hour or less,” Brown said. “We need to condense to figure out what we really care about the most... Things will get lost in the conversation with all of these points.”
Sophomore Class Senator Nina D’Amiano echoed Brown’s sentiments, speaking specifically to a future-oriented approach to the discussion.
“We should condense our updates as much as possible. It’s great to show him that we’re doing things, but since our time is so valuable, rather than talk about what’s already in the bag, [we should] spend time talking about things we want to change and our goals,” D’Amiano said.
Brown further pressed the SGA to be specific in their approach to discussion, particularly in the area of mental health initiatives.
“I think mental health is very pertinent, but if we’re going to talk about that, we need to ask specific questions, not just about the task force,” he said. “Daniels doesn’t have direct say over [the task force] and he’s probably not well versed in that topic.”
Sophomore Class Senator Ash Panakam elaborated on her findings from working with Matthew Torres, the director of the Counseling Center, and spoke to how the SGA could help the Counseling Center improve on appointment wait times, funding, staffing and turnaround.
“The Counseling Center wants to do all these initiatives, they’re so pumped for it, but they just can’t staff it. They don’t have money, they don’t have resources, they’re very limited. And they did hire more people, but it’s not phenomenal,” Panakam said. “It still takes a week and a half, on average, to get an appointment. If you need to be seen that day, you will be seen that day, but a week and a half is still a long time.”
Panakam also hoped that more professors would emphasize the importance of mental health and is seeking the help of Daniels in order to rapidly implement that initiative.
“First day of class, if every professor goes to their syllabus and mentions [mental health] even just once at the beginning of the year, that’s something that will be taken into account,” she said. “Having Daniels’ blessing and expediting the process would be great. We want to roll it around by next semester, hopefully, and that needs to trickle down from the president and the dean to the professor, slowly.”
Green also highlighted the University’s lack of a student union space, suggesting that Senior Class Senator Andrew Phipps and Senior Class President Syed Hossain, the SGA members spearheading the school spirit initiative, press Daniels for advice on how to proceed.
“What we talked about last year for the student union was that it was really expensive, it was a donation problem, and what I want to see is if there are any updates, regardless of all of that,” Hossain said. “We want to see if there is any progress. We really tried to have a big push for it last year.”
In addition, the upcoming 2016 Fall Forum will be an opportunity for the SGA to showcase what it has been doing so far this year. It will similarly focus on key areas of mental health, diversity and inclusion and school spirit. Students that attend will have a chance to view presentations about current ongoing initiatives, go to an open Q&A session and meet and mingle with the SGA.
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