the minaret

By ARDEN IGLEHEART

News Writer

On Tuesday night, Student Government announced the electees for the 2016-2017 year. President and Vice President were secured by James Scudero, a junior digital arts major, and Andrea Roche, a junior human performance major. Mallory Kuba won Speaker of Assembly, Magen Olander and Isabelle Smith won Sophomore Senators, Karen Weiner won Senior Senator, and Kevin Cooney, Mitch Arnold, Sabrina Greco and Juhi Kore were elected Campus-Wide Senators.

Significant changes are in store for next year, according to Scudero and Roche. One thing they plan to focus on is providing greater access to study areas. Scudero hopes to open up a few areas in dorms, to students who don’t live there, and have other study rooms on campus open 24 hours.

“There are a ton of areas on campus where you either need to be a resident of the dorm building or are only open during certain hours,” Scudero said. “But there are study rooms all over the place, and we want to make those open 24/7 and have any student be able to go there, like the eleventh floor of [Jenkins]. Even if you didn’t live in [Jenkins], you could still swipe in and go there. Not to any of the dorm areas but strictly to get to there. And we’ll work with campus safety to make that happen.”

Increasing student leadership and involvement on campus is another main goal. They plan to create a student leadership database, where organizations can post leadership positions and students can easily find those opportunities and look for the best fit for them.

They also are planning to try to improve school spirit and get people excited for athletics. One of the things Scudero proposed is tailgating before games.

“Organizations would be able to table there, they would have vendors, Athletic Marketing Association would be able to do events, prizes; families would be there,” Scudero said. “We would be able to celebrate right before the game and everybody would go in there and get excited.”

Greek life is one of the largest organizations on campus, and Roche proposed giving it a place on campus to reside.

“We were thinking the Spartan lounge [on the second floor of Vaughn above Spartan Club], getting that into a Greek life home essentially, or community area where they can all post their different awards and their composites and just have a place to call their own,” Roche said.

Scudero and Roche both have leadership experience. Roche was the president and vice president of her student government in high school, and Scudero was the president of the Interfraternity Council.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Scudero said. “Ever since I was a freshman I’ve always dreamed of it, I just didn’t think it would become a reality. I’ve worked in a ton of organizations and tried to move up and tried to get enough leadership experience to become the greatest leader I could possibly be. Eventually, in Greek life I became president of the Interfraternity Council and I learned so much. Between all these leadership retreats I felt like this year was the right year to run, and I felt like I was prepared enough and can bring a lot next year.”

Scudero says his experience with the Interfraternity Council will give him the skills to oversee and effectively manage SG’s budget.  

“With me being a president before, I’ve managed and allocated a budget before and so I understand exactly how strict and tight you have to be with it,” Scudero said. “One of our prime focuses is to make sure that we get this budget tight, we get it correct, and that we make sure by this time, people are still able to get their appropriations at the end of the year. This is a marathon, it’s not a sprint.”

Roche and Scudero were happy with the voter turnout and enthusiasm for the election this year.

“Even if they didn’t vote for us, it just means a lot that people got involved in this election,” Scudero said. “We hope to make the student body proud and we’re here to work for them.”