By Lana Lagomarsini, News Staff

A new Student Government Association (SGA) initiative will give students an opportunity to voice opinions about changes in the university with a click of a mouse.
SGA launched a new feature on its website, sga.neu.edu, that allows students to post suggestions they want SGA to work on and for other students to vote on the suggestions in order of importance.
‘The key aspect is it allows students to vote on new ideas,’ said SGA President Ryan Fox.
The idea was inspired by a similar system on the Starbucks company website, Fox said. The set-up time was short, only about three weeks and the new feature was posted on the website Aug. 10.
As of press time the most popular suggestion on the site has 45 votes and suggests student emergency medical technicians respond to emergency calls instead of Northeastern Division of Public Safety (NUPD) officers.
‘When students call NUPD for medical help they get police officers who are usually not interested in being an EMT and are more concerned with their job as a police officer,’ the post by user Abgraber said. ‘Volunteer students would be excited and willing to provide quality, professional care as they have been trained and licensed to do.’
Some of the other popular ideas on the site include a meal equivalency plan in which meal plan dollars could be used in on campus eateries like Wendy’s and Pizza Hut and to have unused print quotas roll over to the next semester.
‘I think it’s probably the best thing SGA has done to access student priorities the time I’ve been here at NU,’ said Matt Soleyn, vice president for housing services of the Resident Student Association (RSA).
Soleyn said he believes SGA’s website makes it easier for student groups to make changes and approach the administration with proof that they have student support.
‘I think the new direction [for student groups] ‘hellip; is to get involved using blogs and twitter to get feedback,’ Soleyn said.
SGA will take the suggestions with the most votes and try to put them into action, Fox said. Although the website does not have many registered users yet, Fox said he believes it will grow.
‘This school’s so big it might be hard to find students,’ said Jordan Toucher, a freshman chemistry major. ‘This website allows [SGA] to take everybody’s opinions into consideration,’
‘We want a lot of students to be represented,’ Fox said.
RSA has taken a similar route recently in efforts to get student feedback, partnering with website neustudents.org to get students more involved with message boards, according to the RSA website, rsa.neu.edu.’ Students are now able to join a forum online to discuss anything that is on their minds.
Nathan Heaps, freshman computer science major and creator of neustudents.org, said he believes RSA wanted to have access to hear from the student body without university interference. Heaps also published suggestions on the SGA website.
‘I was curious to see what other people thought of my ideas,’ Heaps said.
The website is monitored by a number of SGA members, Fox said, and hosted from an outside source.
Although the site has some subscribers, some students on campus said they feel SGA should advertise for the website more.
Lisa Cook, a senior nursing major, said she was not aware of the new feature, and would be more likely to check out the website if they had publicized it more.
Advertisements aside, students questioned also felt that the website is a good idea for students to get their voices out to the administration.
‘It’s always reassuring to know your opinion is being heard,’ said Priscilla Brito, a senior speech language pathology major.’ Knowing that the website is available, Brito said she would post any suggestions she may have.
‘At least there’s an effort to allow students to voice their opinions,’ Brito said.