How difficult is it to get involved with student government?

flashmountain
Sun, 08 May 2011 23:58:17 +0000

Freshmen can run for the freshman class council - elections are pretty soon after orientation. Although they are indeed a part of SU, the class councils are basically glorified event planning groups… which, while useful, they don’t seem to really be involved with SU in terms of policies or funding or high-level stuff.

When most people think of SU, they think of the Executives, Treasury, or Senate. As Ninja said, Senate seats are allocated by the 5 colleges. Treasury handles most of the student group funding and registration and what not, and Senate is like the activist / campus initiatives body. You have to be elected to serve on either Treasury or Senate - not sure when elections are for freshmen - but each of those bodies have un-elected committee memberships like Budget Committee or other things. If you’re doing the SU pre-o program I’m sure this will all be explained to you. One of my floormates this year (well, technically last year now) was appointed to Treasury because there was a vacant seat or something.

Beyond SU, there is CS 40, which entails the individual dorm councils and the larger “assembly.” CS 40 handles event planning for the dorm councils and other events that are centered around the South 40. Not positive, but I’m pretty certain that all CS 40 positions are elected, but luckily elections are in the fall so freshmen can run and CS 40 is pretty heavily represented by freshmen.