Last month, Spring Hill College’s Student Government Association convened their first in-person meeting of the new school year.
SGA is planning on implementing new initiatives and continuing to pursue the implementation of ones that were proposed last year. SGA president Matthew Lash talked about several of their administration’s plans and initiatives for the upcoming year.
Lash stated that senior senator, Betsy Blumenfeld, has proposed an initiative to provide kitchen equipment to the community kitchens in various dorms on campus. Students would be able to rent out this equipment when needed. Lash said, “Hopefully that will go well and we’ll be able to implement that further with other rentable housewares that students might not have access to or might not be able to afford. So things like vacuum cleaners, irons, kitchen appliances, and stuff like that.”
Lash said that they are also continuing to pursue various initiatives that were started last year. One of these is an initiative by Senior Senate President Grace Crapps. The initiative would be a freshman mentorship program. Lash explained, “She [Crapps] is looking at routing it through LEAP to try and overcome a lot of the issues we encountered with it last year.”
Another plan that they are hoping to continue to pursue from last semester is about starting a student emergency fund on campus. Lash said, “This [fund] would be if a student encountered a sudden unexpected financial burden. Something like if there was a death in the family and they couldn’t afford a flight home, there would be funding available to them.” He went on to explain that the way in which these funds would be raised would be through T-shirt sales. He said that they hoped to get it started in January when everyone returns to school.
SHC recently announced a tuition reset which essentially cut tuition in half and reduced room and board by about $3,000. SGA Vice President Dionte Rudolph spoke about SGA’s role in this decision. When asked if SGA had any role in the tuition reset decision, Rudolph said “SGA actually was not in the discussions for the tuition reset but right now our goal is kind of like to be a middleman for the student body and the administration. Just getting the word out about it and gathering any questions, comments and concerns that students do have.”
SGA holds weekly meetings Wednesdays at 7:00. The student body is welcome to attend these meetings every week. To stay up to date on what SGA is up to, be sure to look out for their emails and to follow them on Instagram @shcsga.