By Chris Estrada
Over 40 Northeastern student groups took part in the year’s first “Student Group Synergy” session in the Curry Student Center Ballroom and afterHOURS Nov. 21, the biggest turnout in the three-year history of the event.
Synergy was created in the 2003-2004 school year as a “forum to speak openly, and at times, bluntly … student to student,” said John Guilfoil, Student Government Association (SGA) executive vice president for student affairs.
“It’s a way to get student groups together into a big room – in this case, two big rooms – and talk about what’s on their mind, what issues they face as student leaders, have them work together and get along with each other,” Guilfoil said.
Student groups have increased collaboration projects with one another in cosponsoring and bringing events to campus. To Guilfoil, this is the goal of Synergy.
“We want groups to get together and work together, and be able to use each other’s spaces,” he said. “There’s also a big networking component to [Synergy]. We’ve seen a lot of increase in cosponsorship in the last two or three years, so it’s definitely one of the goals of Student Group Synergy.”
The first half of the meeting began with a 10-minute meet and greet, where the audience, between 100 and 120 people, wrote down a random question on an index card, and walked around the room to members in different groups to get an answer. The members would then swap cards and repeat the process with others. By the time it was over, members of different groups were sitting at the same tables together.
From there, the Latin American Student Organization (LASO) presented “Managing The Vision,” a PowerPoint presentation that showed how LASO was able to manage their club through management tools such as handbooks and member databases and through principles such as unity and collaboration within and beyond the organization.
LASO President Sergio Marrero saw the presentation as a way to help his peers in student group government.
“Any way we can help other student leaders is beneficial and that meets our mission,” Marrero said. “We came to [Guilfoil] for the presentation. We were thinking of having our own event, but it coincided with something they were doing, and why not come together? It always goes back to the mission. If your mission overlaps with an organization, then it’s your responsibility to reach out to that organization and see if they’ll come on board, and together as a cohesive group, bring something on.”
Members from other student groups have already warmed to the idea of collaborating with other groups on campus to serve the Northeastern community.
“I love collaboration,” said Miles Turner, a sophomore business major and member of the Northeastern Black Students Association. “I think two heads are better than one, and three heads are better than that. The more people you can get, the more successful the event.”
After dinner at afterHOURS, 55 people remained and held a breakout session in order to get more detailed feedback and ideas from groups.
“We got in a big circle to discuss the issues and talk about stuff like advertising, some of the pitfalls that come with efficient marketing, pursuit of programming, and we talked about some student government issues,” Guilfoil said. “We had a good, healthy debate between some of the smaller groups and the bigger groups.”
Some groups also utilized the time to take what Guilfoil called “potshots” at SGA as well.
“Some of them questioned our ability, and were questioning us advocating for all students, being more available and having resources well known,” he said. “We work very hard. The Student Group Synergy we put on attracted more students at one time than all the other Synergies combined over the last two years, so we’ve really come a long way. SGA is doing its job. We’re doing our job to make sure all our bases are covered, and it’s disheartening when people don’t really grasp that.”
Last Monday’s event was the first of a four-part series of Synergy sessions that will take place this year, Guilfoil said. He also revealed a preliminary project that would tailor these sessions to the smaller student groups on campus, under the working title of “Mini-G.”
“It’s basically Student Group Synergy for the smaller groups, the more upstart groups that have either just been created in the last couple of years or groups who have less than 25 members,” he said. “Sometimes, when you get in that big, huge room with all these massive groups that have been around forever that have over a hundred members, the smaller groups sort of get lost. I wanna see about the concerns of the little guy, and see what we can address.”
