PDF
Written by: Dan Merica
On Saturday February 13, Student Government Association (SGA) hosted the second biannual Boston Inter-Collegiate Leadership Conference, a gathering that brought together student leaders from ten other schools in the area. The comprehensive agenda addressed a number of issues, including smoking policy, sustainability, budget cuts and Haiti relief efforts.
Members of Bentley SGA admitted that not being able to access the budget makes their job more difficult. President of SGA Puja Shah also pointed out that it was “ironic” how SGA was struggling to communicate with students, “considering we are trying to represent the students.” Shah called the lack of communication between SGA and the students, “our biggest barrier.”
Shah highlighted communication, both with students and the administration, as priorities on her list of areas to gain insight on. While she did say that Bentley’s SGA has a great relationship with the administration, she also pointed out that she admired the way Northeastern deals with budget planning.
“Between November and March, SGA sends out surveys asking students, ‘What are your top priorities for the budget,’” said Shah. “They then meet with their senior vice president and they go over what is important to students and ask the administration to please pay attention to this.”
Schools in attendance included Boston College, Brandeis University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and Harvard University, among others.
Though the schools in attendance varied widely, Senator Brendan Gerrity and Senator Ryan Aucoin, the two organizers of the event, both agreed that all schools had common issues to address and could learn a great deal from one another.
“We feel we can learn a lot from all the other schools,” said Gerrity. “Boston College and Boston University have different issues than we do and although they may be much larger schools, they can bring a lot of knowledge to our organization and to our students.”
Vice President Kathleen Yorkis opened the event and welcomed all those in attendance. She highlighted a few areas that she was looking forward to hearing about, including timely discussions like Haiti relief and social networking, as well as issues like smoking policies and town relations, issues that according to her “were discussed 20 years ago.”
Aucoin echoed Vice President Yorkis, stating, “A lot of the time, some of the issues we may be going through now, schools have gone through those issues in the past and because of that they can give us great advice as how to deal with the issues we are currently going through.”
Other outcomes of the event included interest in language-learning floors in different dorms, as well as the possibility of creating a new position within SGA that deals directly with sustainability.
Haiti relief was discussed at length, with President of the Association of Bentley Activities Tyler Williams representing Bentley’s Project Haiti team. Among ideas discussed were online donations, concerts for fundraising and the possibility of partnering among universities in relief efforts.
“One of our goals is to push this forward and to make sure that it [the BILC] does not die with us today,” said Aucoin. That goal was reached when, at the end of the conference, Boston College agreed to host next semester’s conference in the fall of 2010.
Aucoin went on to say that he was “very impressed” with how the conference played out and said he looked forward to attending next year.
“It is great to have leaders from all different schools come together and share their experiences,” concluded Aucoin.
Comments on this entry are closed.