By Brystol Beatley, Staff Writer
For the past three years, Wheaton College’s Student Government Association (SGA) has undergone a restructuring process that was completed this year.
The internal changes this year include a 20-member senate made up of elected student representatives, with each class getting five representatives. The goal is to provide a more accurate representation of the student body in proposals and policy-making and increase student involvement in the governing process. The Student Government Association (SGA) executive and administrative board, which includes the student body president and vice president, is primarily responsible for writing proposals that the newly founded Senate can pass, amend or reject.
Michael McKoy, associate professor of politics and international relations and the SGA senate advisor, said the structure not only provides better agency to the student body but also strengthens the executive board.
“Having the president and VP choose the executive board means there will be a more coherent leadership team with a shared vision and strong working relationships going in,” said McKoy. “
This became apparent on Sept. 8, when the senate and executive board had their first meeting.
“It really felt like it’s coming together,” said Bryant Davis, student body president. “We see the end goal of the restructuring, which was, as it always was, to have these senators represent the student body. And they did that wonderfully last night.”
Aside from introductions and onboarding, the leadership teams participated in a training activity. Each secretary came up with two to three potential proposals for senators to indicate which they are most interested in. Davis, shared that the most popular policy changes involved including more multilingual worship and other aspects of the chapel, move-in day regulations and the college’s cafeteria rules at Anderson Commons.
Ella Djojonegoro, a sophomore economics and philosophy double major and the secretary of global engagement at SGA, highlighted the promising perspectives the new senate brings. In her role as secretary of global engagement, Djojonegoro seeks to work with the International Students Program (ISP) to advocate for policies that help with transition and community for international students.
“I was kind of surprised at the number of people who are either citizens of another country, like I am, or traveled abroad,” Djojonegoro said at this years first senate meeting. “That was really encouraging; they have some sense of what I’m talking about when I’m going to bring these things up.”
Kristen Black, a junior international relations major and SGA’s public relations manager, explained how the next steps are to make SGA more directly accessible and recognizable to students. One potential way is presenting who the student leaders are on social media.
“That’s something that I think board members and the president and vice president and the senators wanna do,” Black said. “They want to be approachable.”
As the school year picks up speed, Davis highlighted how SGA’s vision for the year is to reach more broadly to students, with ideas like suggestion boxes or promotion tables in the lower level of the Todd M. Beamer Student Center, a popular common space on campus for students. SGA has used these strategies before and now hopes to reimplement them.
“Those are things that are very community-facing,” Davis said. “At the end of the day, we only wnat to put forth proposals that represent the wants and needs of students.”
Editor’s Note: A former version of the article said that there were 40 representatives in the senate with 10 senators representing each class. The Record apologizes for the error.
