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SGA and RSOs reconnect

Leadership Reconnect is an opportunity for the SGA to gather with the presidents or treasurers of all of the registered student organizations (RSOs) on campus to give relevant SGA and Student Life updates. The members of the recently inaugurated cabinet of the SGA took this opportunity to introduce themselves to the campus leaders and share their main goals for the semester.

President Lucas Gallo stressed that he wanted to increase the involvement of students who are not officials of the SGA. He said, “I recognize I’m not an expert in a lot of things at Stevens,” so his idea is to bring more non-SGA students to administrative meetings and to help them recognize their power through the SGA. Gallo shared a unique vision as well. He wants to bring more attention to underrepresented majors by displaying student art on campus and having a Stevens Music Tech student open for the Techfest artist. Gallo also discussed working with the Career Center to hire a professional to help students apply to graduate and professional schools.

One of the main objectives of Vice President of Operations Rami Kammourh is communication. He hopes to establish more formal communication with the Stevens administration and to decrease the disconnect between the Senate and the Cabinet. Kammourh’s other goals focus on reestablishing campus traditions and bringing about a more effective system for festivals.

Vice President of Finance Anthony Picone plans on bringing more order to budgeting. To increase budgeting efficiency, Picone will be holding a budgeting workshop and meeting with high rollover RSOs to discuss budgeting.  Major initiatives include making one unified budgeting guideline, bringing together the requirements of the SGA and Student Life under one document, and fixing up any discrepancies. As it is stands right now, the SGA has no basic template or guidelines for what to do if an RSO commits any potential infractions. Picone plans on creating a penalty matrix for these situations in order to remove subjectivity in penalizing.

Vice President of Academic Affairs Mariana Flemming will continue her previous initiatives. She will also improve student-faculty relationships with the help of the Student-Faculty Alliance and the SES Master Plan Committee. Currently, Flemming is working with students and the Mathematics Department to improve the quality of math classes at Stevens. Students are encouraged to go to the Calculus Town Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 7, in Babbio 104 from 3 to 5 p.m. Flemming also wants to work with the Co-op program so that it can be expanded to CAL and Business majors.

Secretary Reegan McCaulley will be working on establishing transparency by creating a website for the SGA. She also wants to help increase passion in the SGA Senators and help new incoming Senators transition into their roles.

Vice President of Student Interests Dakota Van Deursen, who also ran Leadership Reconnect, emphasized that he wants to hear the people’s voice. His main initiatives include revamping the new organization process by shortening the interest period, standardizing the new organization steps, and clarifying penalties. In short, the goal is to organize the new organization process and make it less frustrating for students. Van Deursen also plans on formalizing faculty advisor requirements. He wants to establish a common ground for all RSOs so that some clubs don’t experience an enthusiastic advisor while others never see their advisor.

One large topic at the meeting was Constitutions. Van Deursen plans on auditing all RSO constitutions. This is intended to gauge RSO activity. His plan is to have the list of constitutions available to the SGA and the club members to allow for organic evolution for both future club members and future Vice Presidents of Student Interests. Van Deursen also shared his plans to attend club meetings and events to ask general club members for their opinions on their organizations and how they can get better. All RSOs were asked to go over their constitutions.

Student Life reviewed the RSO Good Standing Policy and student leader requirements. On the topic of event advertising, Asisstant Director of Student Life Chris Shemanski also informed organizations that flyer printouts have been reduced from 100 flyers to 75 per event and told organizations to take down flyers after the event passed. Flyer requests must be made in person. He also reminded people to be courteous when writing on the chalkboard outside of Pierce. The system is first come, first serve. The board will be cleaned by Physical Plant on Sunday nights. Shemanski explained the procedure for any movie showings clubs might hold. Movie rights must be bought – showing movies on Netflix is not acceptable. This is a federal law and not a Stevens rule.

Student Life also showed students how to use DuckLink and all the apps that are available to them. The Campus Labs Check-In app allows for easy attendance tracking without a card reader. Corq is an event app that connects to DuckLink and shows all registered DuckLink events.

Financial Coordinator Brielle Melillo and Anthony Picone also discussed finance changes. Leaders expressed their frustrations about the rule regarding catering, which is now being more strictly enforced. Any prepared food must go through Compass One catering unless a waiver form is approved. Light snacks under $100 can still be bought with P-cards.

Altogether, Leadership Reconnect was an opportunity for all campus leaders to come together to get updates and voice any questions or comments that they had.

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