Student Association President Neal Casey opened Monday night’s SA meeting, held at 7:30 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium, with a message of clarifying why recruitment is the current goal of SA.

Casey said SA is supposed to be a representative body, but it is not fully representative of Syracuse University. SA is not about politics — it is about being a student and the issues facing the student body, he said. Casey stressed the need for representatives across all schools and colleges because different people bring different opinions and experiences.

SA moved closer to reaching full representation as 10 students ran in assembly elections. After rounds of questioning by the general assembly, all members were elected with little to no discussion about their validity. But PJ Alampi, the Board of Elections and Membership chair, said he believed that some of the candidates’ answers were too generic.

Three students were elected to represent the College of Arts and Sciences, two to represent the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, two to represent the David B. Falk School of Sport and Human Dynamics, and one to represent the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Freshman Duane Ford was elected as the first representative of the School of Education.

‘I definitely don’t think we are here just to get an education. We are here to make an impact,’ Ford said.

The School of Information Studies also gained its first representative, sophomore Mouhamed Sourang. Sourang was also elected to hold a position on the Finance Board.

The School of Architecture is now the only school without representation in SA.

‘We are well on our way. We are really excited about the progress we have made on our goal,’ Casey said. ‘It’s great because this is a goal that we can really measure our progress on, and we have seen a lot of our assembly members really step up. So we’re happy. We still have a long way to go, but we’ll get there.’

Along with Sourang, Kyle Coleman and Alma Puskar, both sophomores in Whitman, were also elected as members on SA’s Finance Board. Puskar and Coleman spoke about the importance of funded events benefiting the entire university community and the responsibility of a Finance Board member to provide an unbiased opinion.

‘I’m really happy with the people we elected,’ Jeff Rickert, SA comptroller, said of the new Finance Board members. ‘I think they are really passionate about what they are going to do, and they seem really informed and ready to go. I’m very excited. I think we are going to have a great board and well-run budget processes this semester.’

Taylor Carr, Student Life Committee chair, presented new advancements. He and Assemblymember Sydney Lampe spoke about the initiative to get a Redbox at a central location on campus. Obtaining a Redbox for the university is ‘very likely,’ Lampe said.

 

Other business discussed:

• In his report, Casey informed the assembly of a new joint initiative with E.S. Bird Library to provide the library with laptop locks for students to use. This initiative has come after his recent work with the Department of Public Safety, Casey said. DPS also has created a new telephone number, 315-443-SAFE, for all escort programs, he said.

• Carr said the Student Life Committee has been furthering an initiative to bring a bike-borrowing service to campus. He said the committee members are looking to contract a local bike shop to get a fleet of bikes accessible to students.

• Rickert presented three new Finance Board bills at the meeting, all of which were passed. The Syracuse Animal Rights Organization was granted $300 to send two representatives to a national conference and Alpha Chi Sigma was also granted $75. First Year Players were denied funds for a reimbursement of purchased scripts, as reimbursements are against the Finance Board’s financial codes.

rebarill@syr.edu

Published on September 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm