speaks Tuesday at a town hall meeting. SERENA YU/ DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF
Boston University’s Student Government had their first town hall meeting Tuesday night, where they discussed their work from last semester and upcoming plans to better engage the student body in student government.
Archelle Thelemaque, SG director of communications, said that while SG has held press conferences in the past, she felt town halls would attract more students.
“The Daily Free Press is very active, the Buzz is very active, WTBU News is very active, but beyond that we don’t really see people coming in, press asking questions about what’s going on with student government to cover it,” Thelemaque said. “So what we wanted to do is bring students into the conversation of what’s going on with the student government while also having the press here, so we can kill two birds with one stone.”
Thelemaque also said that SG plans to have at least two town halls each semester and will hold additional meetings for larger events to answer students’ questions.
“Say the spring concert,” Thelemaque said, “people really want to know what’s going on with the spring concert, and we’ll have a town hall for people to come in and ask questions.”
The overarching goal of the new town hall format is to get students more involved with SG, Thelemaque said.
“We definitely just want people to come out and ask questions,” she said, “and get involved with student government because there is no point in having a student government if students aren’t telling us what they need.”
During the town hall, representatives from the three branches of SG — the legislative, executive and judicial — spoke about their projects from last semester, as well as future projects they are working on.
Andrea Gomez, SG’s head judicial commissioner, said that the judicial leaders are looking to make their branch of government more equal with the other two by increasing their activity within the senate.
“We really want to make the judicial branch more active, and we will do that by making the constitution more specific in respect to that,” Gomez said. “We also want to be able to provide more advice to senate, as outlined in the constitution as one of our duties, so we are going to do that through reflections on how we see that things are taking place.”
Senate Chair Andrew Chiao, representing the legislative branch, spoke about the Senate Outreach Program, created last semester, that connected student clubs and organizations with SG senators.
“Senators were matched up with different organizations that aligned with their academic and extracurricular interests,” Chiao said, “and were tasked with going to their organization, establishing time for a meeting and saying, ‘I am one of this college’s representatives, and I am a resource for you in student government in any way we can be of assistance.’”
SG President Devin Harvin represented the executive branch and described how new leadership from the communications department has improved the website and meeting format of SG.
“Communications has done really well under new leadership, it’s kind of done a 360,” Harvin said. “The whole town hall was put together by Archelle and her team, which is really great, a great energy change from the press conference we had earlier last semester.”
