The Seton Hill Government Association (SHGA) executive board hosted their first ever Club Officer Orientation on Sunday, Sept. 15. A collection of student officers gathered in Admin. 206 to review the important how-to’s of club leadership. This marked one of many steps the SHGA has taken this semester to increase club officer involvement.
One of the training session’s goals was to make the confusing process of planning a club event or fundraiser more accessible for student leaders in the future.
“Having had difficulty ourselves at one point or another trying to plan our own events and fundraisers, we decided that it would benefit all of the clubs to have a training session where they could learn all of the need-to-know information to keep things running smoothly throughout the year,” said SHGA President Emily Namachar
The orientation also served to stress the importance of having a senate representative present at the bi-weekly student senate meetings. This year, if a club fails to send representation to at least 80% of the meetings, they will not be able to request funding from SHGA for any reason. They will also miss out on opportunities to be part of student-centered decisions and have a say in what goes on around campus.
“I think it is important for the student senate to engage the diverse population of students represented by the various clubs and organizations at Seton Hill so that we can make decisions reflective of the entire student body. We can’t expect to be able to do so if representatives from these organizations fail to attend the senate meetings,” said former executive board member of the SHGA Natalie Balfe who participated in the orientation as the vice president of the chemistry club.
“I appreciate that the SHGA is trying to do as much as it can to help the officers of the clubs across campus give the students the best possible experience they can while attending Seton Hill,” said attending junior Mark Cornelius, president of the math club.
The increase in club officer accountability will be accompanied by an increase in trust and involvement.
“We wanted to give our Senators more authority, so we changed our by-laws so that clubs that want to be recognized on campus now have to make a proposal before the Senators who then have to vote on whether or not those clubs should exist on campus,” Namachar said.
“I definitely think there is a lot we could do to improve it and make it more exciting. Unfortunately, there are just some things that are so full of information that there is no way to make the entire event fun,” said Namachar.