SGA reports on progress

The beginning of spring semester is a critical time for the Student Government Association (SGA) to formulate new ideas and reevaluate goals set at the beginning of the academic year.

Recently, the various committees of the Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR), such as the Academic Affairs Board, Campus Affairs Board and FreshGA have been communicating with students to determine their chief concerns and priorities.

According to Paul Byrne, undergraduate executive vice president, the key goal at this point is to "find out what students want us to work on this semester."

Byrne said that it is important to form a general consensus on what needs to be done in the remainder of the year.

Once this consensus is reached, SGA will review its goals to see how the student body's priorities have changed and then revise the list.

"Actually, we are in the process of doing that now," Byrne said.

The focus is now on funding student life initiatives such as Sting Break. Byrne stressed the need to find newer alternatives than just taking thousands of dollars directly out of the Student Activities Fund.

"We are going to start hammering these [goals] through the Executive committee and the House," Byrne said.

SGA's latest plans are concentrated mainly on long-term projects that will affect thousands of students.

According to Byrne, the student government is focusing "not so much [on] programming the events, but doing policy and institutional changes that will last the next five to 10 years."

Over the past year, SGA has worked to rewrite the policies of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC), which determine how student government allocates funds from the accounts funded by the mandatory Student Activity Fee.

Byrne praised the members of the Conference Committee that has been working on the revised rules for the past several months.

"This is the best group of reps we have had in a long time," he said.

Other major initiatives in the works include creating new academic policies and redesigning the dining hall plans.

"All of it stemmed from things that came out of last year," Byrne said.

One of SGA's greatest successes this year was planning the Finding Common Ground event, which took place in November. The event featured a speech by Maya Angelou, which was attended by over 4,300 people. Small group discussion forums on diversity, religion, race, creed and color followed Angelou's speech. Consultants analyzed student opinions during these sessions and reported them back to SGA, which is evaluating the feedback.

SGA is always looking for more active participation from campus denizens. Students who want to get involved can learn more at www.sga.gatech.edu.