Sinclair Community College’s Student Government Association held its elections for their new officers on Sept. 27. The elected officers for the academic year are Frank Browning for president, Josh “G2” Estepp as vice president, Aerial Rowland for secretary and Fabio Rosa as the treasurer.
SGA Advisor Tom Roberts is pleased about the elected officers.
“I’m excited about Student Government and we’re going to make things happen,” he said.
Browning said he is also excited for what’s to come.
“I think my goal this year is to really define what Student Government does and get it known to Sinclair,” Browning said. “I think we put a number on it, 15,000 or 20,000 students we’d like to reach by the end of this year — it’s a really good bet, and we’re going to do this by enhancing campus life … as well as we’re going to dabble in some diversity issues.”
The officers were voted on by members of the student senate. Roberts hopes by next year, SGA can hold a campus-wide election.
He said the reason students didn’t vote on the newly elected officers was because not a lot of students know about SGA.
Browning understands this and hopes to change it.
“Sinclair doesn’t have a campus life, it’s very nonexistent and the only thing like campus life is clubs,” he said. “We’d like to branch out, because there’s a lot of students that are not a part of the clubs. They’re either doing classes or doing a job on campus and we like to reach those individuals and bring them together for some fun entertainment, as well as some educational experiences. It’s just an untapped resource.”
He defines campus life as students coming together on campus to meet and learn from each other.
“Campus life is very hard, [depending on the] college,” Browning said. “As a community college, you kind of get that stigma that there is no campus life and you go to [community] college and then you go to the next step, which is a four-year … To me, campus life would be a gathering of students on campus doing something for the community or just hanging out and teaching everyone about their experiences or what they do. You can meet a lot of great people if they just hung out on campus.”
Browning added that he would like to see a diversity center on campus.
“I know we have a chief diversity officer on campus, but I believe it should be expanded,” he said. “Diversity is very broad, like a place for Muslims to pray, that way they don’t have to do it in public … maybe just a private place for them to go practice their religion without anyone saying anything. I know one of the things Brite Signal was doing was trying to get a LGBT resource center here on campus, and that could also be put into a diversity center. It could also talk about African American culture, international students could come and share their cultures and it could have resources for everyone.”
Roberts said the officers are currently in the process of deciding a meeting time. When the time is finalized, all students are welcome to attend SGA meetings.