Matthew Robinet

On Feb. 10, 2013, the second to last Siena Heights University (SHU) student government meeting of the year began. Starting promptly at 6 p.m., the E-board took their place on the Reuckert Auditorium stage. Only a handful of students, many of them are at every meeting, are in attendance.

The meeting lasted about a half an hour and was greatly devoted to SHU Student Government concerns, namely wrapping up the recently administered summer class surveys. However, when the time came for open forum there were no concerns. “This happens every meeting.” Bryant White, a junior class senator, noted. “Over the whole year, I think there have been less than ten concerns brought up during open forum, many of those being from one meeting.”

The lack of concerns and attendance can easily be linked, but it brings up the question: Do people simply not know about the meetings? The student government meeting schedule is not easily accessible on social networking sites, although allocation board meetings and general assembly meetings are listed on the student government MySiena page. The Office of Student Engagement puts out a monthly calendar with on campus events, and student government meetings are not on it. The difficulty in finding out when meetings are could be enough to keep large groups of students from showing.

Jason Uribe, a junior sports management major, said, “I have only been to two meetings, once because I was interested in the topic of the meeting and once because I heard there was going to be pizza. I would go to more, but I never know what the topics of the meetings are, or if there even is one (a topic).” Uribe continued, “I went to the meeting about sand volleyball courts because that interested me. That was the only meeting I heard about that interested me though.”

The final student government general assembly meeting is scheduled for April 7 and has an interesting topic that should give many students a reason to come. A SHU master plan for the next 10 years will be released, and will be of great interest to freshman students as they will feel the effects the most. Following the assembly meeting there will be a final allocation board meeting on April 14.

Walking down hallways, sitting in classes, or even just hanging out in Benincasa’s, it is easy to hear people talk about improving the school in one way or another. These ideas, however, have not been brought up in student government meetings. “If student government doesn’t hear about it, we can’t take the concern to the people that need to hear it to make a change.” White says. “Next time you think of a good idea for improvement, bring it to a meeting and present it.”