SGA plans for free laundry and higher voter participation
September 9, 2019
Free laundry, better relations with our Hamden neighbors and an upcoming election to promote are keeping SGA busy. Quinnipiac’s Student Government Association (SGA) convened on Wednesday for its first general meeting and discussed these plans to improve the QU community.
Among these representatives is SGA Vice President Sophia Marshall, who has several plans to improve the student experience.
“Personally, I’ve been working on building laundry included in tuition for a while now,” Marshall said. “That is something that is in the works. It’s a vice president level conversation now, so we’re really excited about that. We are also working to establish an external affairs committee, a committee that’s going to be working specifically with the town of Hamden to push things that are not necessarily under our control. We’re working on getting field time for club sports on the varsity fields, which is something we currently can’t do, so big things for club sports and new and exciting things this year.”
SGA is also looking to improve voter participation on campus. With freshmen elections on Tuesday, Sept. 10, SGA’s Vice President for Public Relations and Marketing Jamien Jean-Baptiste is determined to change that.
“So one of my goals that I discussed with our advisors is to increase the amount of people that vote in these student elections, and part of what we’re going to do is we’re going to increase exposure all throughout campus,” Jean-Baptiste said. “Since this is the freshmen election, we’re actually putting up tables in the most frequented spots on campus by freshmen, including the bobcat, right outside Commons, right outside the student center. We’re going to have student government members stationed outside giving that final push like, ‘Hey did you vote yet?’”
SGA meets in the Mt. Carmel Auditorium (CCE 101) every Wednesday at 4 p.m. In order for students to run for office, they must have attended an information session last week. The next step for students who did attend a meeting, and are interested in running for SGA, is to get signatures from the student body in order to appear on the ballot.
SGA also discussed a potential meeting with Chair of the Quinnipiac Board of Trustees William Weldon, after a petition was filed calling for his resignation. This petition wants Weldon removed from his position on the Board of Trustees because of his involvement with Johnson & Johnson during the height of the opioid epidemic.
