After a series of staff changes following the departure of three Executive Board members at the end of the fall 2014 semester, Boston University’s Student Government plans to focus on outreach and several large campaigns to better engage the student body.
President Joe Ferme, formerly executive vice president, said he looks to increase communication between students and SG to address problems around campus.
“Whether it’s polling or asking them what they’d like us to prioritize, to work on and encourage them that they can turn to student government for us to direct them the right way, answer the questions and hopefully solve the problems,” said Ferme, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “We’re really hoping for students to know what we’re doing, but more so for us to know what they want.”
Ferme succeeded Richa Kaul as president, and vice president of Finance Joshua Mosby took Ferme’s place as vice president, The Daily Free Press reported on Dec. 11, 2014. Stephen Chang, previously judicial commissioner, was elected Senate Chair succeeding Tyler Fields, and William Horne, a former member of the Department of Advocacy, filled Mosby’s spot as vice president of finance.
“So far, we’re really working together great,” Ferme said. “We’re really comfortable around each other, and we all respect each other. I really think we’re going work well throughout the semester.”
Chang said he wants “to see the bigger picture” with his new role to help direct Senate and promote its initiatives.
“One of the biggest proposals for Senate is to expand our PR reach, so getting
students involved, knowing what we’re doing and then expanded presence on campus,” said Chang, a junior in CAS.
Horne said he looks forward to having a “bigger leadership role on campus” to monitor SG’s budgets and to reach out to students on campus.
“The hardest thing I guess about student government and really any student group on
campus [is] reaching out to everybody,” said Horne, a sophomore in the School of Management. “It’s not that we haven’t reached our optimal level, because I think that would be saying a disservice cause we’ve been doing a really good job reaching out to the student body, but that’s something you can always improve and work on.
Alexander Golob, chairman of the College Government Presidents Council, said he plans to streamline the election process for college governments by aligning their schedules with SG’s general election.
“College government elections have sort of been everywhere in terms of scheduling,” said Golob, a junior in the College of Fine Arts. “We’re trying to make the college government’s timeline align with the student government’s schedule so that everyone is helping to promote the idea of participating in the process of voting and becoming aware of the concerns of the community through the election process.”
Mosby also said he has concerns about student participation but he is confident that SG’s efforts will better appeal to the student body.
“The challenge is we kind of have an apathetic student body. We want to just let the student body know that everyone is a part of student government and that we’re really here to work together,” said Mosby, a sophomore in CAS.
Executive board members met Sunday to talk about upcoming plans for the semester, Ferme said. SG will focus on the “16,000 Strong” campaign to raise awareness about sexual assault and relationship violence and the “Expect More” campaign to gather student feedback.
Robbie Brussell, the SG communication director, is leading the “Expect More” campaign that was launched during the fall 2014 semester. Students will participate by responding to a couple of survey questions via text message throughout the semester.
“This semester, we’re more focused on jumpstarting the signups,” said Brussell, a junior in SMG. “Since we’re only going to have three questions, it will most likely be big picturesque questions on housings, the bus and things alike.”
The survey will begin once 1,000 phone numbers have been collected to make sure there is enough representative data, Mosby said.
“Launching this campaign is going to help us provide hard numbers and hard facts behind what we’re actually saying so that we have hard statistics,” Horne said.
Students will now be able to sign up for an SG newsletter that was previously only available to Executive Board members on the Friday before each Senate meeting, Brussell said. The newsletter will include upcoming Senate agendas, cabinet updates and Execute Board updates.
The “16,000 Strong” campaign, lead by Horne, is an initiative from the fall 2014 semester, started by former Chief of Staff Pablo Das.
“This semester’s going to be really good in terms of laying the groundwork and really starting to complete initiatives, put on events and make sure that the student body is aware of this issue,” he said.
As part of the campaign, SG has reached out to organizations such as the One Love Foundation to provide training sessions for student leaders on campus about sexual assault prevention, Mosby said.
SG also plans to continue the Warren Recycling Project and Shaw’s Rewards Program launched in fall 2014, Ferme said.
Several students said although they are interested in SG’s initiatives, more work needs to be done on campus to fully tackle problems on campus.
Amanda Grice, a sophomore in the College of Communication, said she hasn’t seen much advertising about the specific programs and initiatives SG is working on.
“I haven’t heard much about them. I’ve heard them in passing, but nothing specific,” she said. “I wish they’d contribute with fresh ideas for students to know more about SG.”
Sophia Perez, a sophomore in the College of General Studies, also expressed interest in the campaign, but said more marketing should be done on it.
“They [SG] should really pump up their reaching-out program. It seems like they have pretty good initiatives but they need to make sure that students are aware of them,” she said. “I’m really supporting the ‘1600 Strong.’ It’s good knowing that BU’s doing something about it ’cause it’s really been going on for quite a while, and I’ve hardly heard BU doing anything about it.”
Quinn Wilson, a freshman in CAS, said “Expect More” is a good strategy to get students engaged, but the campaign will need to go further to see a real impact.
“As long as people are aware that they’re [Student Government] actually doing something tochange how BU acts and behaves, I think it’s a good idea.” he said. “Hopefully that can get itgoing strong with more than 1,000 people.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said Stephen Chang was a sophomore in CAS, rather than a junior and misplaced a quote by Will Horne talked about the “Expect More” campaign, rather than the “16,000 Strong” campaign. The story has been corrected to reflect these changes.
