By Steve Babcock
For Student Government Association President Michael Romano, the year ahead marks a new time in the fight for the students at Northeastern, and a time to step up the fight to get their attention.
With semester conversion implemented and with the creation of a new position — Coordinator of Sexual Assault Services — not yet filled, SGA will have a host of issues — some new, some old — to bring before the Student Senate this fall.
Romano, a middler international business major from just outside Syracuse, N.Y., said a major goal of this year is to implement and oversee what he calls “mechanisms for student advocacy.”
He said the executive board will be actively pursuing the dispersal of revised student evaluation forms that have long been pursued by SGA members. Also, SGA will look to pass legislation requiring every professor to post syllabi online.
The group will also look to advocate for the students in the university budget process by passing legislation to “outline to the University Budget Committee where student’s priorities should lie,” Romano said.
“We want to ensure that there are little or no increases in tuition,” Romano said. “We have a large opportunity to increase the intellectual atmosphere. If we don’t step up with stronger academics, then they will leave and our standards will remain below what they should be.”
Romano also said the senate will look to further its outreach to students, an issue that heated up at the end of the spring quarter during elections by engaging in “aggressive grassroots contact with students within residence halls, within dining facilities.”
“My time here is more about earning students’ respect by advocating and ensuring that there is always someone looking out for their interests,” Romano said of SGA’s role in the student body. “It’s easy to become too political, and it’s just as easy to be angry, but everything we do this year as an e-board and as a senate will be constructive. If a student is angry and upset, I want the first place they think of to be Student Government.”
In Romano’s eyes, the theme of reaching out to students will last all year long. In doing so, making the SGA more accessible and known to students, which was debated sharply in the senate’s major piece of unfinished business from last year — the Senate restructuring legislation.
Romano said the e-board has set a timetable for that undertaking to be finished “by December.”
Sharif Zied, the Restructuring Committee’s chairman, is currently on co-op, but several senators maintain that he has already been in contact with the e-board and will see the process through to completion.
This fall will also mark the beginning of the SGA’s push for the direct election by students of the SGA’s e-board. Coming off the success of last year’s initiative to increase the Student Activities Fee, Romano said there will be a subcommittee forming this semester to begin discussing how to implement the policy that, if the SGA members had their way, would make the SGA truly accountable to the students in the eyes of the university administration.
Another issue that Romano said the group will debate with the administration is that of securing a multi-purpose sports stadium on campus. Romano said that a stadium, which was a major platform of his run for presidency, would bring more students together on campus, furthering the Northeastern community and bringing debates closer to the students.
With the new battles, though, will come new faces to senate debate.
The executive board is young — only Vice President for Academic Affairs Peter Antonellis is a senior — and there are two sophomores, including the Vice President for Student Affairs, which is the organization’s number two position.
And they’ll have limited help in getting the issues cooking at the weekly meetings as three of the Senate’s most outspoken voices — Jason Kravitz, Samuel Klar and Zied — are on co-op this semester.
Romano does not view youth or loss as setbacks, though.
“There’s always going to be the loss of leadership, and the emergence of new leadership. That’s what keeps us fresh,” Romano said. “More senators than ever before feel comfortable raising issues and taking student concerns to the next level.”
As an organization, Romano said that SGA has the history of “persistence” on its side.
“We were persistent with sexual assault, and we’ll be persistent when it comes to tuition rates,” he said, with reference to the Romano-led crusade that eventually convinced the administration to create the sexual assault position on campus. “This is much more than a student organization to me. If students can’t be involved in institutional change and advancement, then we will never move forward as an institution.”
