By Molly Burke and Matthew Sotlar
The Student Government Association is preparing for the 2023-24 school year with plans for student life improvements, campus events and new elections.
SGA is comprised of the office of the President, Executive Cabinet, the Academic Senate, and a Representative Body.
Alexander Papa, SGA president and business administration graduate student, said SGA’s purpose is to advocate for students at Youngstown State University.
“Our little motto is ‘to unite, to represent and to serve.’ So, basically we’re here to advocate for students on campus whatever their needs [and] whatever their concerns are,” Papa said.
Papa said some of SGA’s goals this year are to build on progress from last year and create new initiatives to improve life on campus.
“We are sort of focused on — first and foremost — expanding our Aunt Flow initiative … to [Williamson College of Business Administration], [Cushwa Hall] and [Beeghly Hall],” Papa said. “We’re going to focus on food insecurity. We do our big Swipe Out Hunger Week in the fall.”
Junior philosophy and anthropology student, Jordan Pintar, is the vice president of SGA. She said SGA is also going to expand Penguin Shuttle services and create a student-run garden in the Sandy Simon Greenhouse in Ward Beecher Hall.
“It’s a certain type of [GPS] technology that would be in coherence with the Y-app, so essentially you would be able to go on and see the Penguin Shuttle at any time,” Pintar said. “We have gotten [a] chamber of the greenhouse over in Ward Beecher that we can use to grow food for the Penguin Pantry.”
Pintar said SGA also planned Welcome Week events and fun activities to engage students on campus.
“We will eventually be having food trucks on campus. We will be doing like handouts of food vouchers as well.” Pintar said. “Our first event that I’m super excited about is the campus cleanup that will be happening … in September, October and November. Our first one is Sept. 27 … it’s just an opportunity for us … to kind of group off and clean up campus — go around and pick up trash.”
SGA will hold elections for those interested in being representatives or senators. Pintar said students can apply this fall.
“We [sent] out applications for representative positions and senator positions on [Aug 21] … if you want to be more involved, the representative position is definitely the way to go. We have meetings from 4-5 every Monday,” Pintar said. “The student senator position is more guided to the once a month on Wednesday’s Academic Senate meetings.”
Sofia Myers, junior political science and communications major is the SGA vice president of student activities. She said students can also get involved with SGA by reaching out for help.
“Through the [SGA Instagram], send us a DM,” Myers said. “All of our emails are available on that website that’s in the bio as well. If you didn’t want to go directly through the website or the Instagram, you could see all of our emails of the executive team on the [SGA website] as well.”
Myers said the SGA is centered around the student body.
“We get students involved,” Myers said. “We make sure there’s a safe place that students can come to … really getting out there and making sure that the YSU students are feeling happy, they’re feeling engaged and they feel that YSU is the place to be.”
For more information on the SGA, head to its website.
