A Time for Change?

 By Wayne ElliottChronicle Staff Writer   Before the beginning of last fall semester, The Manhattan branch of the NYIT Student Government Association set goals that it wanted to accomplish before the end of the academic year: increased visibility, growth and better cooperation within the student government and administration recognition.  With only a few months left in the academic year, the question is did it reach its goal?   The SGA, by definition, advocates on behalf of student interests—academic, cultural, and social. It is also broken down into two branches: executive and legislative, with the executive board consisting of a president, vice president, treasurer and secretary. In the beginning of fall 2007, the SGA legislative senate only had 5 senators; toward the beginning of the spring 2008 semester, the SGA legislative senate branch had increased by 2 members, with help from the campaign the SGA had held during the fall semester in order to recruit new members.  Even though the executive board and present senators of SGA appointed the new senators, an increased legislative branch seemed to be a great advantage for student involvement.   To help improve cooperation, during the fall semester, the Manhattan SGA had attended trainings, in order to get an idea of how they should run the government and how to work together to get tasks completed efficiently.   The group also tried to attend more events like College Success Seminar classes (where they would give a synopsis on the SGA and its purpose), NYIT Open House, and the NYIT Club Fair “We wanted the Deans and the Administration to know who we are, in order to get things done on the campus, and we would receive respect from them as well.” stated the SGA President, Milan Michal.    Recently the Student Programming Association and SGA have joined forces to make a “united front.” “We were thinking, as long as it was ok with SPA members, to combine so we could make one entire organization—a stronger organization,” said SGA secretary Giuseppina Amorella. With the combination of these two organizations, student input should not be a difficult task at hand. The structure of SPA and SGA would proceed as follow: instead having one vice president of SGA, there will be two vice presidents—one being the chairperson of the House of Representative (currently held by Munira Ahmed) and the other being the chairperson of SPA (currently held by Rhonda Alexander).    But not everything went well. With no open SGA meetings or more events to re-introduce the executive and legislative branch and their purpose, the SGA remains more invisible rather than visible.  Still the Manhattan SGA is looking to “set the bar” for the next group of student leaders. As Giuseppina Amorella states, “With a stronger and more visible SGA, we can accomplish more, and by doing so, be able to, not only solve more students problems, but solve them more efficiently as well.”