Student Senate Looking for Student Representation

by Lauren Dawson

Concordia’s student senate currently lacks student representation and hopes to bring in more student input. 

While the number of clubs represented at senate meetings has been increasing in recent years, the number of hall representatives has remained extremely low.

“Ideally, we would like to have a hall representative from every hall, and every club represented,” said student senate president Owen Dawson. “We acknowledge that this is hard to do, but currently we are very lacking in hall representatives.”

Dawson explained that the lack of representation is causing a major problem for the senate.

“Our committees aren’t as full as they could be,” he said. “We don’t have as many people to give ideas, give input and come up with creative solutions to whatever problems we are considering.”

Low representation can also become a financial problem for the campus clubs, who begin to lose funding if their representative is absent from more than two senate meetings per year. 

The question remains, why is student representation, especially among halls, so low? According to Dawson, it comes down to two things. 

“It’s either because a lot of people don’t know the senate exists or what it does,” he said. These ideas are echoed by Ethan Ideus, a Residential Assistant from Dorcas Hall, who says his residents don’t know a lot about it.

“I feel that it’s also a lack of interest,” he said.

Even those who do understand the senate seem to be underrepresented, and many are satisfied with this, including Timothy RA Brooke Lange, who says she has “no complaints” with her hall’s lack of representation.

The senate hopes to solve the problem of low student representation in the future and is currently discussing ways to provide incentives to the halls. Dawson hopes to make high levels of representation normal in years to come.

“I think that if we had more of a tradition of sending hall representatives, then more students would know that the senate exists and know who to talk to if they had something to bring up,” said Dawson. “Having more people involved would just be more voices that people can connect with and get their thoughts and ideas heard and discussed by the senate.”