SGA member Mason Lawson discusses the importance of Student Government and making your voice heard.
TRANSCRIPT:
0:05: Welcome back to Chronversations.
0:07: I’m your host, Cameron Johnson.
0:10: One of the greatest freedoms is the freedom of speech, and the SGA, short for Student Government Association, is not only an advocate of these freedoms, but also for the students on Columbia College’s campus who walk in these freedoms.
0:22: They recently had one of their weekly meetings take place this past Tuesday.
0:25: So, in preparation for this event, I took the time to interview a representative of the organization to hear a bit more about them as a whole and how they function.
0:33: My name is Mason Lawson.
0:35: I am a senior film and television major.
0:37: My pronouns are he/they, and my position for SGA is I’m the student representative to the Board of Trustees.
0:42: To the best of your ability, can you tell me what the origin of SGA was and like the overall vision for the group?
0:47: I believe we’ve had SGA for close to, if not 30 years now.
0:51: It was something that was meant to be a student advocacy group, to help elevate student concerns to administration within Columbia.
1:00: How do you think the work of SGA has impacted students and how have you been impacted as a student?
1:05: I think SGA has worked to help support students as different issues have come up.
1:13: I know in the past few years, Columbia has been in a very transitional period with different administrative changes, as well as program restructuring.
1:23: The goal of SGA has been to help students not feel lost, with programming structures.
1:34: One way that I personally have been impacted is, I’m a film and television student, and one of the things that I worked to do with SGA was restructure or increase the number of BA capstone course offerings, for film and television BA students.
1:50: Because there’s many different concentrations that are represented and give more options to students to make sure that they can fulfill their graduation requirements.
1:58: So even with those things that you already have been fixing and restructuring, what do you want to see expand even more with SGA?
2:06: What things have you guys talked about, to try to grow more for Columbia?
2:10: I would love to see more connections between administration and students.
2:15: Obviously, SGA is there very much as a team of advocates, and while we have more direct connection with administration, I would always love to see more chances for admin to correct directly with more of the student population through events.
2:31: We already have “Hi- Tea” with the provost and the president, but seeing more Board of Trustees members, going and supporting students and having more of those conversations directly.
2:42: I think the most effective way to advocate for change is when you have those different populations connected.
2:53: That’s very true.
2:54: I saw that you guys are having an event tonight.
2:56: It’s y’all’s weekly meetings.
2:58: Can you tell me a bit about what those entail, where they’ll be taking place and all the details behind that?
3:04: Our weekly meetings are on Tuesdays from 5 to 6 p.m. They’re typically in the boardroom.
3:09: Sometimes they are held in the loft, but usually it is a chance for us to go over open comments.
3:19: Our SGA meetings on Tuesdays are open for anyone that wants to come in and voice concerns.
3:24: Today we’ll be having security coming in to go over different on-campus resources, and have our Senate talk about some concerns that they’ve noticed whether themselves or from their peers.
3:35: In the past we’ve had organizations like Columbia Votes to come in and talk about getting prepared, especially with it being an election year as well.
3:44: Giving more information to the students, our goal is always to help pass along information.
3:50: Again, some of our weekly meetings occasionally are like the “Hi-Tea” with the provost and the president that I mentioned earlier, but we usually also use it to prepare for town hall season.
3:58: That is when our SGA senators go across different campus communities to help collect specific feedback to their area.
4:06: And it’s a chance for them to get support in planning those events, whether from the E-board, from their other peers, and kind of just make sure that we’re all staying up to date and staying on top of everything.
4:16: Also, looking forward to getting into some planning for the town hall season as well as talking a little bit more about on-campus housing.
4:25: SGA has a form out right now to get feedback from students on campus housing to then bring forward to administration about the different residence halls as we look at our options, so to speak.
4:42: If you have any questions or concerns about how to improve our campus, the SGA is more than willing to answer them.
4:47: To contact SGA, you can email them at sgasecretary@colum.edu, and you can see the latest post from SGA on their Instagram @columbiasga.
5:00: Make sure to stay up to date with campus and metro news at columbiachronicle.com.
5:04: I’m Cameron Johnson.
5:05: Thanks for listening.
5:06: And until next time.
Copy edited by Camila Verzino
