SGA Improved Involvement

In an academic year fraught with concerns about the impending demolition of McIntosh Center to make way for the Nexus, Barnard's Student Government Association sought to improve communication between students, faculty, and administrators while ensuring that more students felt involved in and connected to the work of SGA.

"SGA this year ... set a precedent for being efficient, organized, and making sure that the administration listens to student concerns," outgoing SGA vice president of communication Idris Leppla, BC '08, said.

SGA hosted a series of town halls on financial aid and students' ideological comfort in the classroom. The association held three fireside chats with Barnard president Judith Shapiro-who announced last month that she will be stepping down at the end of next year-and dean Dorothy Denburg, focusing on college activism, women, leadership, and Barnard's role within the broader University structure.

SGA also represented Barnard students' concerns regarding day-to-day life and student services to administrators. Responding to a variety of complaints about conditions in housing, SGA met with Ann Aversa, director of Residential Life and Housing, to ensure that student concerns were being dealt with appropriately. The organization's efforts resulted in the office's adoption of a policy to respond to student complaints or inquiries within 24 hours, according to Eman Bataineh, BC '07.

This year's board framed many of its initiatives around a larger goal of recruiting and engaging students in SGA's work. A revised constitution, voted on by the Barnard student body at the beginning of the academic year, detailed the participation of all students in SGA and the role of the body within Barnard. At the same time, three new positions were created and filled-representatives for diversity, student services, and University programming.

Working toward increasing student involvement, SGA established three new committees-diversity, housing, and student organizations-and created additional positions on existing committees. SGA members went door-to-door in Barnard residence halls to introduce themselves and ask for comments, questions, and concerns.

The outreach appears to have struck a chord-49.6 percent of students voted in this spring's elections, an increase from 40.1 percent last year.

Jonathan Siegel, CC '08 and new chair of the Student Governing Board, said SGA has worked hard to forge stronger Barnard-SGB relations. "If I had to point to what I would think a perfect student council is, I would point to SGA," he said, adding that this year's board had been perfect for "the little things," being readily available to discuss co-sponsorships and other SGB concerns. He said that when the SGB asked the councils to focus on increasing the board's funding, "the SGA was the first group to sit down with us."

Perennial campaign concerns, including universal access and L-course sign-up, were met with limited success by this year's SGA. Campaign promises made during the last two years to abolish Barnard's L-course registration system, which often results in long lines at the registrar's office for limited enrollment course registration, have gone uncompleted. SGA was successful in persuading the registrar's office to install an additional computer terminal, which has led to registration lines moving a bit faster.

"Things like L-course sign up and flash access ... these are things that every board wants to go in and solve," Leppla said.

Bataineh said that increased efforts at communication with the student body, such as door-to-door visits and the publishing of a weekly newsletter as an alternative to unread e-mails, were successful but "you can never do enough. ... We still get the feeling people don't know about SGA."

Lara Rosner, BC '07, said she was proud of the SGA's work in reaching out to administrators like Barnard's vice president for finance and its general counsel. She said the biggest challenge had been working to fund programming and allocate to its individual student groups within a limited budget.

For next year, Bataineh said that maintaining a sense of community and happiness during the construction of the Nexus will be a big challenge.

Looking back on her tenure, Bataineh said she couldn't even remember what platform she had run on a year ago. "The things that I generally advocated for got done," she said, citing pushes for increased focus on diversity, sexual assault prevention, social issue awareness on campus, and outreach to Barnard's students and administration.

Tom Faure contributed to this article.