The Student Government Association (SGA) spent their Oct. 12 meeting voting on formations of committees and calling all students to vote.
Sen. Alondra Cruz-Hernandez presented an Atlanta campus special order to form an AD-HOC safety advisory committee, which would be made up of students, senators, and liaisons to talk to and work with the Georgia State police department, escort service, and panther ambassadors.
The committee’s aim will be to assist in creating a bridge of communication between the students and Georgia State University Police Department (GSUPD) as well as improve overall campus security
Georgia State students will be able to reach out to the safety advisory committee and express how they feel about what’s going on around campus, what they like, and what they think needs improvement. The committee’s job would be to then pass those concerns down to GSUPD.
“It just kind of makes a bridge between the students and these departments so that there’s not a rift between the students and police department. Sometimes students feel like the [Georgia State] police aren’t easily accessible or kind of intimidating and so we want to form this to kind of ease that intimidation that students may feel,” Sen. Cruz-Hernandez said.
An athletic committee was also voted on to help the athletic department gather more support and student involvement at different events. Sen. Joshua Akinola-King, Sen. Noah Samuelson, and the athletic team will be working closely to find ways to increase student attendance and engagement at events.
“There have been concerns that not only student-athletes are not represented among student communities but also student engagement in the actual athletic events such as games and tailgating are not represented by students,” Sen. Samuelson said.
Georgia State student ambassador Evan Malbrough of the Andrew Goodman foundation also presented the “Vote Everywhere”, a non-partisan voter registration and civic engagement organization promoting voting for students, especially on college campuses.
It is Vote Everywhere’s first year on campus and they have partnered with the African-American studies and the political science department to go around classes and register students to vote. They also want to set up polling places around campus year-round instead of just during the major elections.
“We will like to expand and work with student organizations with things like having voter registration polls at events and having voter registration at orientation,” Mailbrough said.
Lastly, SGA tackled the Quality Enhancement Planning Committee (QEP), a committee ran by faculty that sets up a five-year guideline to help improve the quality of higher education. Students have received applications in order to start advancing Georgia State. The QEP is a part of Georgia State’s accreditation process, without which the university could lose their accreditation.
