It was business as usual at last week’s Student Government Association (SGA) meeting – except, on this particular Wednesday, that business was conducted on more comfortable chairs.
The SGA held their annual New Jersey State House meeting on April 14, in which the association busses its general body to the political hub of Trenton in order to hold its meeting in one of the building’s Senate chambers. While there, members reflected upon the recent Mike Huckabee event and discussed a proposed student carpool system.
Brian Block, vice president of administration and finance, introduced the SGA to the carpool initiative he has worked on with senator-at-large Megan Coburn.
The pair has worked in tandem with the Greater Mercer Transportation Management Association (GMTMA) in order to develop a system that works with the students, according to Block.
“It would be students carpooling with one another to get to campus mostly,” said Block, junior political science major.
He went on to outline the system’s objectives.
“The three main goals of this are, one, to save students money on gas … two, to eliminate and reduce our carbon footprint in accordance with the president’s Climate Commitment Committee, and three … to (rather than) build more lots and create more expenses … subtract cars and then making parking a little bit easier,” Block said.
Block and Coburn, freshman math secondary education major, hope to survey students in the next week to gauge interest, and hopefully to launch a website with help from the GMTMA.
“They have a website platform that they could recode and refine for us … our goal is to get it up no later than the second semester of next year,” Block said. “We look forward to that, as it’s something that could serve the students on three fronts, and probably not cost us anything.”
The SGA also noted the success of the recent Mike Huckabee lecture and book signing.
“In the beginning of the year, our goal for bringing people in was to get (the College) more prominent public servants, whether they be national or local, and through bringing Corey Booker and now Mike Huckabee, I think we’ve really reached that goal,” said Olaniyi Solebo, vice president of legal and governmental affairs and sophomore economics and political science double major, who helped organize the event.
Both aspects of the evening were well-attended.
“We had over 800 people come to either the book signing or the lecture,” Solebo said.
Billy Plastine, senior political science and business administration double major, presided over his final State House meeting as executive president, but bestowed good wishes upon candidates running for office for the 2010-2011 academic year.
“I really am pleased so far with the caliber of the campaign and I’m really encouraged by the quality of the candidates that we have running this year. I wish you all a lot of luck,” Plastine said.
Voting for SGA representatives took place April 19-20.
