Changes made to spark involvement

Originally published: Sept. 16, 2010
Publication: THE GLOBE

New United Student Government (USG) programs will aim to provide free incentives for student involvement as the result of recent meetings.

Student leaders also made changes to improve the election process and filled empty seats on the committee.

"I'm excited to get started," Michael Potoczny, USG president said. "All these things are finally coming to being and we'll see how they go."

One of these things would be the School Spirit Ad Hoc Committee of USG, which was formed "to support student's academic and extracurricular efforts," according to the resolution passed unanimously. To encourage student participation, the spirit committee will host events such as fan T-shirt night.


"It will be a different design for every team and if you come, the first so many gets a free T-shirt," Potoczny said. "That's just to promote people to come out to the sporting events and give the teams support, so it's just something to get the students out there and supporting our teams."

The short-time goal at the present is to get the committee set up.

"Right now we're just trying to get people, not only from USG, we're trying to get people from the cheerleading, athletic teams, other groups so that we can have a voice from almost every area of the school, because we don't want just USG saying this is how school spirit is going to happen," spirit committee chair Peter Bridge said.

USG members also implemented a bicycle program. It will begin with a budget of $800, which will be used for two Raleigh Detour 4.5 bicycles.

"It would be a great way for students to explore around the city, see different sights. It's cheap. It's a workout. There's just endless bike trails up and down the rivers so why not give the students a chance to get out and explore the city?" Potoczny said in an earlier interview.

The USG election process also received minor changes.
"Our constitution is out of date," Potoczny said. "There's a someone who is in charge of it and that position isn't even real so we updated it. So we had to change it."

The elections board was turned over to the students. In the past, it was composed of three students, the Dean of Students and the director of Campus Life.

"We have an elections board and the elections board is students who are not in USG, so when we hold elections we have an unbiased body and it's made of respectable students on campus so we don't have any problems or fixing of elections so it's a nonbiased board," said Potoczny.

In addition, now only the Dean of Students "may recruit additional faculty or staff members to assist in the polling process," a change from both the Dean of Students and the director of Campus Life.

The freshmen elections were changed from the first week to the third week of the fall semester.

"The time frame wasn't really working out with the way the structure goes," said Meagan Stroud, USG press secretary said. "They have to come to the office and fill out an application, get petitions signed, stuff like that. So there wasn't really enough time."

An assortment of committee appointments were also made. They are: Heidi Schlegel, sophomore COPA representative; Joseph "Ian" Sulkowski, sophomore school of arts and science representative; Randi Fetzer, junior arts and science representative; and junior representative Marissa Deasy, President Pro-Tempore. They were all nominated and appointed to represent their individual schools and the USG.

"I'm representing the sophomore class of the school for arts and science so anything that I can do to effectively represent the people who are in my school is my aim," Sulkowski said.

Fetzer also agrees that helping her school is her goal.

"I want to make future students and students who already go to the university aware of the benefits of attending Point Park as an arts and science major," she said.

Deasy, who became vice-president last year after then-President Ryan Deasy resigned, hopes to focus on the commuter students.

"I want to try to get commuters more involved in general. I definitely think there's a wide gap between residents and commuter students on campus," she said. "Also, school spirit is something overall I think everyone is really excited about this year."

Changes made to spark involvement