Elmhurst University’s Student Government Association starts recruitment efforts

SGA held its first meetings of the school year on Sept. 8 and Sept. 15 in the Blume Board Room. 

SGA President Daizja Hollman said her goal of the Sept. 8 meeting was to promote group bonding as well as pique students’ interest in SGA.

“I really want to focus on everyone getting to know each other and then hopefully getting a lot of recruits for SGA because right now we’re a little bit small so hopefully, this first meeting, people will see how SGA normally goes and … they’ll be interested and want to join,” Hollman said. 

The meeting started with an election rule, which only current SGA members could vote on. This was followed by a visit from Elmhurst University’s President Troy VanAken and Vice President of Student Affairs Phillip Riordan to discuss strategic planning for the campus, which is set for this year. 

Strategic planning is a plan that is made for the campus every four to five years, this year being a strategic planning year, according to Hollman. 

During the meeting, VanAken stated that there are six pillars that strategic planning is based on:  student experience, academic experience; diversity, equity, and inclusion, workplace environment, infrastructure, and financial stewardship. 

Additionally, he mentioned that the goal is to have a draft of the plan ready to be shared in December.  

Hollman hopes that the students who attended the first meeting felt inspired to be active on campus.

“I really hope that they just are interested in SGA like they wanna get involved,” Hollman said.  “And even if they decided SGA isn’t the org for them, that they’ll hear about other organizations and want to get involved that way.”

In the Sept. 15 meeting, SGA discussed their plans to decorate a homecoming banner and passed two new clubs: Girl Up EU, an initiative associated with the United Nations Foundation that seeks to empower women and promote gender equality, and Board Games and Trading Card Games Club.

Vice President of SGA Javier Gloria said he is looking forward to trying to get all students involved on campus, especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

One way he is hoping to do this is to figure out how to market school events and activities.

“I think it was last semester: somebody said that ‘I didn’t know that was happening,” said Gloria.

He continued, “Maybe if we figure out how we can reach those people who maybe don’t have social media or anything like that, because that’s one of the main ways how the office of involvement does, that we do, the LSA, Union Board, all that stuff so I think being able to market would be one of the first things we should do.”