The results of the annual Student Government Association’s election held on March 5, gave Quinnipiac University a group of students who want to improve the organization and the lives of students on campus.
“Next year’s SGA is filled with people who will do what it takes to make school better,” said Dennis Kisyk, next year’s vice president of Student Concerns. Kisyk, a sophomore, is excited about the proactive and visionary attitude of the new members elected to SGA. He said he hopes to see any negative perceptions of the organization disappear.
The members elected have plans for next year that they hope will make students more aware of issues and concerns on campus.
This year’s election process ran from Feb. 26 through March 5. During that time, many students throughout campus campaigned by hanging up posters and flyers in the cafeteria, the dorms and other buildings around campus. Melissa Dudra, a junior and one of two candidates who ran for President of SGA, felt the pressure during her campaign.
“Tom put on a really good campaign,” Dudra said, speaking of her opponent junior, Tom Hyde, who also ran for the position of student government president. “It shook me up a little bit.”
Since Dudra’s victory, she said she has thought of ways to improve SGA and help students even more than she did last year as president. She plans to strengthen ties between students and the administration, and also help build the relationships between SGA and the organizations it supports on campus.
“I want students to know that there are people in that room they can talk to about anything,” Dudra said, referring to the student government meetings held every Wednesday at 4:15 in SC 207.
A major concern from last year’s executive board and other members of SGA was that members in SGA and the administration did not handle and listen to student concerns effectively. Currently, students like Omar Ziyadeh, a junior, are concerned about parking, Quinnipiac’s meal plan, and being better informed of events taking place on campus. Dennis Kisyk plans to help take care of concerns like these by helping to improve the relationships between the top decision makers on campus and the students.
“I want to increase the influence and power of the student body and work on integrating ourselves into the decision making process,” Kisyk said.
Another major concern for Quinnipiac University has always been providing students on campus with enough to do on the weekends so that students are not bored. The newly elected Vice President of Programming, Katie Breen, hopes to improve weekend events.
“I would like to make students more aware of the weekend events that the Student Programming Board puts on,” Breen said.
In addition to these improvements, Mike Germano, next year’s vice president of Public Relations for SGA, plans on promoting all of the ideas, activities, and proposals that SGA will be working on to create a more informed campus.
One of his concerns at the SGA debates, which took place on March 3 at 9 p.m. in the Echlin Lecture Hall, was that not enough students on campus know enough about the problems SGA tries to fix for them.
Germano was disappointed with the turnout of students at the debates and wants to know the reasons why more students were not there.
Freshman Geoff Guimaraes and Sophomore Jenn Sweat were not impressed with the publicity that the elections received.
“I didn’t even know there were debates,” Guimaraes said.
Sweat felt the need for a mass e-mail sent out after the elections to inform people of who won.
Some students did not feel that SGA did enough publicizing of the elections. Others think that this year’s election, compared to those in the past, yielded a greater voter turnout. This year’s turnout was 37 percent of those registered to vote.
“We had a very good voter response,” Ed Kovacs, the assistant director of the Carl Hansen Student Center said.
The plans and ideas for the newly elected members in SGA are mainly about improving student life at Quinnipiac University.
“There will always be people with cynical views of SGA,” Kisyk said. “I hope that people can see that this organization will be different.”
