The Student Government Association's weekly meeting had a different tone this week with a farewell to Student Connections and a welcome to Catalyst as the new executive board slate.
SGA senate and some family and friends from both the slates gathered to hear advice and words of wisdom from Student Connections.
Outgoing president Matt Whitlock explained during his speech the best part of holding a high position in SGA.
"People ask me what has been the best experience, and my answer has to be unwaveringly being in the position to watch what the students at this university achieve and to be able to brag about it," he said.
Outgoing treasurer Ronnie Bell, outgoing secretary Juliana Abercrombie, outgoing vice president Whitney Hamblin and Whitlock each gave a farewell speech to lead into the inauguration.
Student Connections had a number of platform points they presented to students during the 2010 Spring Semester campaign. The platform points were divided into the categories of community connection, diversity connection, residence hall connection, SGA connection and campus connection.
Their accomplishments ranged from multiple one day events in order to bring different parts of campus together to reorganizing the bylaws to better fit the current SGA senate.
Out of the 15 platform points, Student Connections did not achieve two of them.
The first one not completed was to work with Muncie community schools to find ways to stimulate younger students by offering leadership seminars and sponsoring essay contests for high school students, and encouraging elementary and middle school students to submit artwork to contests to win tickets for Ball State sporting events.
Whitlock said a mix up in communication is what prevented the slate from achieving the goal. He said prior to campaigning, they were told they could perform the projects within Muncie schools, but afterward they were told their help was not needed.
The second unsuccessful platform point was to give each student a free guest pass for one home Ball State football game. Funding was not available for the tickets because of alumni using student IDs to get into games at student prices.
Each Catalyst slate member was sworn in by the outgoing person in their position. Incoming president Kayla Pickersgill spoke on behalf of Catalyst before the meeting came to a close.
Incoming vice president Chris Buck adjourned the meeting, and incoming secretary Mary Karner called the final role call for the first time.
Pickersgill said the inauguration reaffirmed her confidence in the way the next year will function under her term.
"It just keeps hitting me how awesome it is to have so many people put their trust in me as their leader," she said. "Today seeing so many other people with that same confidence [I feel] just made [my confidence] grow even more."
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