Student Senate seeks to grow student involvement
Student Senate representatives and club leaders participate in the Senate’s club training.
Photo credit: Dylan Buechler
By Elizabeth Salo and Dylan Buechler
Co-Managing Editors
Concordia’s Student Senate is looking at ways to expand representation and make a bigger impact on campus life this year.
Senate President Aidan McKinnon said that they have lots of plans for the year.
“The last couple years we have done so much as a Senate, and our biggest focus has been to get more awareness,” said McKinnon. “This year, and even last year after the election, students just came up to me and my officers with a lot of ideas, which has materialized as asking the student body about those ideas.”
One of the biggest projects that the Student Senate has in the works is providing opportunities for students to connect with professors.
“We want to do some more stuff with professors, sometime after the class period ends, so students can get to know them in more of like a fun, social environment,” said McKinnon.
Student Senate Secretary Mi-Ree Zwick, who also is a Sower reporter, said they are also working on promoting the club culture on Concordia’s campus.
“[We want to make it] so that the club culture here is a lot more rich and is supported well by us and the student body,” said Zwick. “We want more people involved in more extracurriculars here so that they can enjoy more than studying.”
The Senate has also recently created new representative roles in an effort to get more students involved.
“Because of the fact that we’re trying to get more people involved with Student Senate, this year we’re starting a new role with student representatives for freshman, athletics, music and dorm life,” said Zwick.
Zwick said if Student Senate gets enough representatives outside of the club representatives they won’t have to decrease club’s budgets if they miss a meeting.
“That’s a hope, we’re not sure how it will play out since no one’s ever done this before to our knowledge,” said Zwick.
Vice President Naa Kordai Addy said the Senate also received a lot of feedback at the Student Activities Fair.
“At the activities fair, we had a board up to take students’ thoughts for what they wanted to see on campus, and we have[our] top three suggestions: Kleenex in classrooms, resurrecting the yearbook, as well as either cable or free laundry, one or the other,” said Addy.
Addy said that these are only possibilities and are in no way certain.
“We don’t really know yet. This is stuff we are looking at, stuff we are trying to see if it’s a possibility here on campus,” said Addy.
Senate Treasurer Jenna Shafer said that the most difficult part is figuring out who is paying for any initiatives.
“It’s dealing with the university’s finances,” Shafer said. “And just figuring out where the money would go, or come from, whether that’s the Senate will pay for the Kleenex, or the Senate would pay for the yearbook. Then university-wide, if it would be more cost effective for the university to pay for laundry or cable.”
Junior Genevieve Schmidt attends Senate meetings as a representative for Concordia’s Art Club, and she likes the realistic perspective that the current officers seem to bring to the table.
“Everybody has a lot of good ideas,” said Schmidt. “I think the Student Senate people have been more realistic this year. I think we have people on the board right now who are way more conscious about not making promises that they can’t deliver on (compared with previous years), because ultimately they are really just a middleman between students and faculty, and administration, the people who actually make decisions.”
Junior Brianna Burns said she appreciates the voice that Student Senate gives students.
“To be fair, I don’t know that much [about Student Senate], and I know that in the past, they’ve been able to reverse things pretty well, like changing the library hours to go back to midnight,” said Burns. “I appreciate Student Senate. I think they’re pretty capable of listening to the student body and getting things done.”
