Tuesday, October 4th, 2016 | TechNews

 

sga@iit.edu 5

Student Government Association calls for student volunteers to join committees

Ethan Castro
SGA SENATOR

It is an unfortunate conclusion
that the Illinois Tech Student Government
Association (SGA) lacks suﬁicient
transparency or clear communication in its
projects and functions. There is deﬁnitely
some merit to this claim. SGA lacks a formally
recognized forum for inputting feedback,
and regular SGA meetings are at a somewhat
inconvenient time (Wednesday nights at 9:15
pm.) This conception is one issue that SGA
hopes to address in the upcoming semester,
as expressed by Executive Vice President
Sonia Kamdar. One of her primary directives
for SGA this year is to “increase SGA’s impact
and transparency by dedicating a committee
to work on events and advertising and by
utilizing several means of communication with
the student body.” Thus, a new project from
the SGA Communication Committee will
be to regularly feature updates on committee
projects in every issue of TechNews. First, we
should get to know each committee of SGA
and the scope of their projects. Each senator is
to pick from one of these four SGA committees
and from there, decide on an individual
project to work on and document. In addition

to representing their individual colleges, SGA
senators take on campus-wide projects from
one of the four Committees: Academic Affairs,
Student Life, Communications, and Events.

Led by Vice President of Academic
Affairs, Akash Raina, the Academic Affairs
Committee of SGA “essentially deals with any
matter that affects the academic experience
on campus,” as stated by Raina himself. For
example, “the committee recently proposed
that quizzes and exams may not be held during
career fair hours, which should be in effect very
soon [...] Some of the projects our senators are
working on are increasing printing funds for
architecture students and expanding ﬂexibility
when it comes to checking out books from the
library.” Although it can be a thankless and
sometimes heavily bureaucratic commitment,
the Academic Affairs Committee of SGA is
an invaluable asset in addressing students’ key
experience as members of Illinois Tech, their
formal education.

Qianran He is the Vice President of
the Student Life Committee, which in her eyes
“solves most of the real life problems around
us.” Student Life is focused on improving the
day-to-day living conditions around campus,
from developing the HAWKi app to changing
the school shuttle pick up locations, or just
adding a whiteboard in MSV. Basically any

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problems or ideas Illinois Tech students have
in their daily life could be set as one of our
projects to work on.” One current project
He’s senators hope to tackle is the revival of
a student discount card, offering discounts to
Illinois Tech students among local restaurants
and shops. Between Academic Affairs and
Student Life, SGA hopes to facilitate avenues
for change across every level of this university.

The Communications Committee
of SGA is responsible for the direct image of
SGA among the surrounding community
both on and off this university’s campus. This
distinction is an important one to make, as it
is a goal of Vice President of Communications
Ielani Canty. Canty sees it as an obligation
of Communications to expand the role and
availability of SGA “not only within the
scope of Illinois Tech, but within Chicago
as well.” Speciﬁc projects to carry out this
initiative include collaborations with student
organizations through an ongoing SGA
senator liaison project and local community
volunteer opportunities. Canty himself is
currently in an open dialogue with the local
Boys and Girls Club of Chicago to create
new volunteer opportunities to link together
the entire campus. Similarly, the very writing
of this article is another such effort by
Communications to more directly engage

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the student body, which is the overall goal of
Communications.

Finally, the newly created Events
Committee of SGA hopes to establish regular
events, both casual and professional, meant
to push SGA as a visible, available, and
approachable organization. This Committee
is still looking for a Chair to lead it, but SGA
President Hamze Leo Sukkar is conﬁdent that
this committee, alongside the ongoing projects
of the aforementioned committees, will help
to break the illusion of SGA as a secretive and
inaccessible organization.

However, these committees do not
work alone. Elected senators are held to an
expectation of working in a chosen committee
and documenting their project progress, but
these projects always welcome volunteers. As
President Sukkar himself says, “[volunteers’]
role is vital, and we need volunteers who could
be interested in joining the Events Committee,
among others. The committee can function at
its best with larger numbers and we are still
looking for passionate volunteers/members
to help us ‘navigate the uncharted seas’ with a
new established committee.” Moving forward
and as a senator myself, I hope and will work
to ensure that SGA grows in its visibility and
project impact. The creation of articles such as
this is simply one step in that process.

 

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