In February, junior Steve Geraci began his term as the president of Student Government Association. He took the time to sit down and explain a little about SGA and how students can get thier voice heard.
What do you think will be your biggest challenge this semester?
I don't think it's going to be a specific goal, but the Fall Semester is always real busy, and probably the biggest challenge that we're presented with is recruitment. As all the new freshman come in, we sort of feel like it is our responsibility to get them involved on campus and kind of reach out and let them know early that there are things they can participate in where they can make a difference and change their environment.
What do students who know very little about the Student Government Association need to know?
Well, that we can actually get things done. I think that's sort of a common misconception for people that know a very little bit about SGA, they will say, "Well, SGA never did anything for me or SGA doesn't have any power."
We do have power. We have the power at least to get people to pay lip service to our ideas and to get some face time with some administrators, and that sort of thing is important. And we can make people listen, and if we try hard enough, we can make changes and start new programs and new inititatives. So, I guess that's what people need to know; people need to know if they get involved they can make a solid impact. SGA can change things.
Why should students who aren't involved care about SGA?
It's their best chance of getting their voice heard on campus. In fact, in the eyes of the governing structure, it's one of the only chances for students to concretely solidify their opinion and voice as one. And that's a really powerful thing. There's no way you're going to get a petition signed by every single member of campus, but every time Student Senate comes out with a piece of legislation, that's in effect what it is. It's important for them to know that there are people working for them, and it's important for them to know that, if they want to, this is where they have their voice heard.
How do you go about helping students who come to you and have issues or concerns about the University? What's the process?
It depends on the concern. If they've got a specific complaint, usually we have the knowledge of who they need to talk to, because oftentimes it's not us. What we have is a working understanding of who handles what thing at the university. And that's useful for students because it's confusing, and we weren't born with it -- I mean, we had to work pretty hard to even know what we're talking about. That's one resource this office has is that if someone calls with an escort service complaint, we can tell them where to go, or if they've had trouble with classes or grades, we can tell them the process for appeals and that sort of thing. We know where to go for their complaints, so that's sort of an important resource.
So, if they have a specific thing, that's what we do. If they have a policy thing, then we can invite them to come in and talk to Student Senate as a whole or ask them to speak to a committee in Student Senate and hopefully one of the senators will pick up and start writing legislation, and we send it through the governing structure and try to get something changed. No idea is too small or insignificant or stupid. We'll research and try just about anything.
Some things we've tried and failed at before, so it's a little frustrating, because every year we get some people that want to talk about food services or parking services and stuff like that. And while we do have concerns, it's better to be specific rather than say, "Well, parking services sucks, and I don't like them. Let's get rid of them." We can't do that, obviously, but we can make suggestions and try to make small changes and win small victories because that starts to add up over time.
Describe your leadership style.
It's real informal. I'm never going to have people calling me "Mr. President" or anything like that. I try to be on first-name basis with everyone. Try to keep my door open, if people need to come talk to me. I've been told that I'm a good delegator, I guess that's a pretty good skill. I like to look at a problem and see each individual task that needs to be accomplished before the problem can be solved and then tell people incrementally which thing to do and in what order.
You mentioned you keep your door open. Do you have a way that you tap into what students are thinking who maybe don't want to come out right away?
Yeah, and that's our hardest job, honestly. Getting outside opinions is tricky because once you get into SGA, you get sort of jaded, like you know things that you can't do, so you sort of think inside of a box. It usually takes some sort of big event or outside influence for us to really sort of jar our thinking out of the old school. We have several ways that we try and do that, and optimally those sort of ideas come to us through Student Senate when they go back and talk with their constituencies. That's hard. I mean, communication has sort of been our buzz word since we took office, and it's the biggest challenge, so we're trying some new things [this] year.
We're setting up a Web site where students can see exactly what we do. There's going to be a rolling budget on there; all of our reports and minutes are going to be published online, something that's never been done before. [Students] are going to be able to find who their specific representative is, if they want to handle by e-mail instead of coming into the office. I think that's going to be a really good resource.
We're going to try some different advertising techniques. Getting those ideas into the office is our most difficult job because once we have them, we know what to do. It's getting some unique ideas. Just yesterday, perfect example, I was talking to some students in the Atrium, I'd never met them before. They said, "You know, I was upset about the academic index. I think it's unfair how they set that up." And that was something I've never even considered before, even though I hated the academic index -- it knocked six points off my high school [grade point average], and that was really frustrating. But we never even thought about trying to attack that, but now that's a suggestion I'll make to a student senator, and probably we can see some changes in that. That's one of those kind of shaky policy things that we can sort of make a dent in, if we try hard enough.
Back to your original question, that's the hardest thing that we have to do. Really, word of mouth and getting on the street and listening and talking to your friends and your friends' friends, that's the only way that we hear about that stuff.
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