Ohio University Student Senate has completed more than half of the goals set by SOS last senate election season.
Last Spring Semester, the SOS ticket was preparing for election season by creating a platform based on serving students.
That platform detailed goals for increasing Student Senate accountability and student outreach while also advocating for student trustee voting rights and more hours per week for student workers.
One year later, the Student Senate has started or completed more than half of the 19 goals listed on its campaign website. The majority of seats, including all executive positions, are filled by members of the SOS ticket.
The remaining five goals were either altered or discarded, Student Senate President Gabby Bacha said.
“I would say we’ve accomplished quite a few of our goals,” Bacha said. “Some of them that are loftier we know wouldn’t completely get done in one year. We’ve gotten a good start.”
In their platform developed last spring, members of SOS outlined a program that would reward students for attending “LGBT sensitivity training, prevention in violence against women, personal safety training, cultural awareness training and professional development training.”
This idea has since evolved into a plan for ”cultural competency courses,” which would offer Ohio University students a chance to learn about a variety of cultures.
“Our idea with this initiative initially was to reward students in some way for becoming educated about these issues, and through a series of conversations we realized that we think it would probably be better to have a course on it to give a more comprehensive view,” Bacha said. “It won’t be mandatory at first, but it will move to be mandatory as attendance in the course goes up.”
A group of students from various multicultural communities met with University College administrators to design the course, Bacha said. She expects the courses will be offered next Fall Semester.
“I think we’ve definitely taken more of an interest in looking at more of the cultural side of academics and incorporating a lot of changes for that,” Rachel Marison, University College senator and senate’s assistant chief of staff, said. “I think in the past years it’s kind of been overlooked.”
Other initiatives largely focus on senate’s funding bodies.
Senate’s uFUND, a pool of money from which students can receive programming funds, was moved under the Senate Appropriations Commission, known as SAC. Amendments were made to senate’s Committee on Conduct and Discipline, fulfilling two SOS initiatives last semester.
Additionally, student groups were given the opportunity to elect students to represent them in senate’s general body and additional seats were added to SAC last semester, among other initiatives.
“SAC this year compared to SAC last year are total opposites,” Hannah Clouser, senate’s treasurer, said. “SAC is running smoothly. SAC is put together. SAC knows what their responsibilities are more clearly.”
Some initiatives currently in the works include keeping tabs with university administrators on the effects OU’s guaranteed tuition model may have on students, increasing the number of online classes offered by the university and increasing the hours per week a student employee can work.
Bacha said increasing hours for student workers was one of the first things she discussed with OU President Roderick McDavis after being elected.
“They (the administration) are working on sort of a GPA threshold for when you can work your 28 or 30 (hours),” Bacha said. “That’s been a work in progress all year. It’s going to happen. We know it’s going to happen. The question is what GPA threshold it’s going to be.”
A “big spring concert,” student trustee voting rights and scholarships taken from extra senate funding are among ideas the body has discarded or has yet to make progress on.
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Clouser said some SOS goals were similar to the goals of former senate President Megan Marzec’s ticket, Restart, and of another ticket, BARE, which campaigned for election against SOS last spring. She added that the channels by which each ticket sought to achieve their goals were different.
“I think our goals were a bit more feasible,” Clouser said. “We had very concrete things, going through this list you can see we’ve checked off a lot of them. We had goals that we set out to do and we’ve done them.”
@mayganbeeler
