The Student Government Association announced at its third meeting of the semester on Sept. 20 that its overarching priorities for this school year fall into three categories: housing, safety and space.
Part of the association’s plans to improve university housing involves greater engagement with the Campus Awareness, Resource and Empowerment Center, which provides emergency housing to disadvantaged students in four apartments on campus. The SGA sponsored the furnishing of these apartments.
In addition to housing, the KSU CARE Center provides job services and food pantries on both campuses to students struggling with obtaining enough food.
When asked about SGA’s safety goals concerning the lack of security cameras at the Austin Residence Complex, which was recently the location of the second on-campus armed robbery of this year, SGA officials seemed unaware of the issue. They said it had been discussed in previous years but had fallen through due to lack of funding.
As well as these three main goals, each individual senator has taken on a personal project, and projects vary greatly in scope and depth.
Some projects were simple administrative changes like extending BOB hours on the weekend to prevent drunk driving between campuses or having the hours at the library on Marietta campus extended to midnight to be aligned with the Kennesaw campus’ library hours.
Other projects needed more funding and involvement from the university, such as building a new fountain on campus to help build a student tradition of jumping into it and implementing a first-year program to teach students how to address a diverse environment when entering into college.
What was most stark about the meeting, though, was the lack of outside student attendance. SGA senators discussed how to increase student engagement through an increased social media presence, as well as increasing their attendance at future events such as homecoming game-week activities.
