Student Government Board members recap their term

Each year, Student Government Board candidates run for their positions on platforms made up of three initiatives. After campaigning comes to an end and Board members are elected, their promises — usually projects aimed at bettering student life or improving University accountability and community involvement — are then challenged over the course of their year-long terms.

This year the 2012 Board, led by Board President James Landreneau, completed some initiatives, altered others and will pass some on for future student leaders to pursue. But although not every original goal was met, new needs and projects arose over the course of the year that SGB members saw to as they appeared. The string of bomb threats across campus last spring presented the most obvious example, but the Collegiate Readership Program, the University’s transgender policy, SGB’s Green Fund Advisory Board, space usage in the O’Hara Student Center and on-campus student voting all represented other pressing issues the Board members worked to address.

As their terms as official undergraduate student representatives come to a close, the 2012 Board members discussed the status of their initial projects and the work left to be continued by future student leaders.

James Landreneau

President Landreneau ran on the initiatives of creating an SGB liaison system, holding monthly town hall meetings and creating an on-campus leadership summit. He described himself as going 2-for-3 on fulfilling his initial goals.

He said that each Board member that was assigned as the liaison to his or her respective student groups sent out emails to their assigned organizations when they requested money at the Board’s Tuesday night meetings. Additionally, he was able to hold three town hall meetings since taking over as president last January. Although he considers the project’s implementation a success, he still believes there is room to improve.

“I still think the town hall can have a place,” Landreneau said, adding that “it needs to have a draw for students” other than food or an appearance from Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kathy Humphrey, who holds her own open-forum meetings — Dean’s Hours — about twice a month.

As for the on-campus leadership summit, Landreneau initially discussed eliminating Panther Gold, the off-campus retreat for student group leaders that takes place each year in late August. But instead of eliminating it, he ended up revising the program by inviting representatives from 15 to 20 more groups than are usually invited, and 60 to 65 groups sent representatives.

When it comes to the other members of the Board, Landreneau thinks they did a “tremendous job.”

“It’s pretty rare to have a Board with 100-percent success rate,” he said, referring to his own and his Board members’ initiative success. “I’m pretty happy with the results.”

Olivia Armstrong

Olivia Armstrong set out at the beginning of her term to utilize social media to gain feedback from students, allow student groups to request for Allocations online and increase the usage of the 30C shuttle bus in South Oakland.

She said that she used social media “a few times” to get some feedback from students, but the responses were limited. SGB currently has a Facebook page and Twitter account.

“[It] didn’t pan out as I was expecting,” Armstrong said. But she remains optimistic about the future of SGB’s usage of social media.

This semester was the trial phase of online Allocations requesting, and Armstrong said she thinks this will continue on into future semesters. Incoming Board member Michael Nites plans to work on the online allocations request system along with Gina Scozzaro, business manager of the Student Organization Resource Center (SORC), who has been working on developing the system.

Armstrong did not provide statistics on the usage of the 30C.

Natalie Rothenberger

Natalie Rothenberger hoped to improve textbook buyback, implement a security escort system and increase the amount of available advertising via the my.pitt portal.

Rothenberger worked with the administration to get 85 percent of professors to respond to inquiries about if they will use the same book in the next semester, which gave The Book Center a better indication of which books to buy back. She also worked to create an informational buyback video for students, to educate them on the process and help them earn the most money for their textbooks.

She was also successful in implementing more advertising through the my.pitt portal. Certain students and campus events are now advertised on the portal. Rothenberger’s work with the portal also includes discussions to create an RSS feed for the student events calendar to make it more personal and convenient for those who wish to access it. Additionally, she created a sheet that lists all of the options for student advertising, which is given to student groups on campus.

Establishing a security escort system turned out to be less achievable than her other goals, according to Rothenberger. She said that the project would have cost “thousands upon thousands of dollars,” and that liability was a big factor in the project’s failure.

“When one project goes wrong, you focus your energy on another,” Rothenberger said, adding that she continued to work with the transportation and safety committee on other issues.

Megan McGrath

Megan McGrath wanted to create a weekend shuttle to the Waterfront, increase advertising for student groups on the my.pitt portal and at outdoor venues and reinstate the Traditions Committee.

She could not implement the weekend shuttle because of legal restrictions found within the contract the University has with the Port Authority. And while she could not get an outdoor advertising location because of difficulties with a construction company, she worked with Rothenberger on increasing advertising through my.pitt.

McGrath said her most successful initiative was the revival of the Traditions Committee, which is intended to implement traditions and maintain them throughout University activities. This year, the committee focused its energy on the football team by rebranding the student section at Heinz Field “the Panther Pitt” and giving away T-shirts to season ticket purchasers that included a Panther Pitt design on the front.

“In the future, I’d like to see that expand to other sports,” McGrath said.

She said the committee took the idea of a football watch party outside the Petersen Events Center to the University, and then the administrators handled the planning. She said that a similar event took place her sophomore year, and after a one-year hiatus, she wanted it to happen again.

“That was one thing students wanted to bring back,” she said.

Julie Hallinan

Julie Hallinan initially hoped to improve the career fair, establish meal plan rollovers after the end of the semester and increase student voter turnout in the local and national elections.

Hallinan teamed up with the Governmental Relations committee to increase student voting and knowledge about the election process. She helped to institute a change in voting location for students residing in the Litchfield Towers and the Schenley Quadrangle from Posvar Hall to the William Pitt Union and created an informational pamphlet outlining candidates running for national and local positions. Hallinan said that the increased number of student voters is a testament to SGB’s hard work, but did not take all of the credit, as she cited campus-wide efforts from various groups to register students and support voting.

Meal-plan changes are currently in the works and Hallinan said that she worked with Jim Earle, Pitt’s director of Housing and Food Services, and Sodexo to discuss the reshaping of meal plan options and prices. Changes will include the combination of some of the dining option tiers, more appropriate meal pricing and the rollover of Dining Dollars from the fall to spring semester. Currently, the Resident Student Association has been taking surveys about the changes to gather student feedback, Hallinan said, but changes should be instituted for the start of the 2013-2014 academic year.

Unlike her other two projects, Hallinan met some unanticipated difficulties completing her career fair initiative. She said that her intentions to improve the career fair needed to be altered because there was information regarding the process that she wasn’t originally aware of.

Hallinan intended to refocus the “heavily engineering-oriented” fairs to apply to non-STEM majors, but found that organizations must pay to attend and if they do not have jobs to offer, money to travel or histories of hiring Pitt students, they are less likely to involve themselves. Hallinan worked with the Office of Career Development and Placement Assistance to discuss future networking opportunities to benefit liberal arts majors by bringing professionals in to speak about their experiences.

As the sole independent candidate elected to the Board, Hallinan said that she was proud of the projects that she accomplished and hopes more people outside SGB are inspired to get involved and take up projects.

“If you run into roadblocks, there is always more work to be done, and it’s important not to be a stagnant Board member. I took up work with Rainbow Alliance and the transgender issue, the undergrad literature holders, and don’t forget the Readership Program,” she said.

The undergraduate literature holders can be found in places around campus — including in the William Pitt Union and the Cathedral of Learning — and hold publications such as The Pitt News and The Pitt Chronicle. The Readership Program, which offers all non-College of General Studies undergraduates free access to daily subscriptions of The New York Times and USA today, can be accessed through the locked drop boxes around campus.

Zoe Samudzi

Zoe Samudzi aimed to create a forum for student organizations to encourage the co-sponsorship of events, compile a resource manual for students and implement an amnesty week for reading and studying before finals.

Samudzi said she knew that her currently infeasible amnesty week initiative would be the most difficult, but continued to work with a number of administrators and faculty members who she believes will be “open-minded in the future.”

Before discussing the publication of a manual with the Cross Cultural and Leadership Development office, Samudzi said she was unaware of the number of manuals already supplied to freshmen during their orientations. She initially envisioned a manual outlining student resources on campus, including alternative funding and the Allocations process, room and table reservations and other resources to help students take on larger leadership roles and utilize campus materials. But in pursuing her initiative, she learned that a “rejuvenation” of current manuals or the creation of new documents would create costly strain on SGB funds.

According to Samudzi, a group of people are now behind the effort to facilitate collaboration, create the co-sponsorship of events and inter-group support in approaching projects and the administration. The project will pass to the new Board.

“I’m interested to see how members of the new Board take up the idea and implement it,” she said. “It is never easy when someone says [an initiative] is not going to work, but you have to keep trying to rework it and make it more attractive for them.”

Gordon Louderback

Current Board member and President-elect Gordon Louderback will be the only returning Board member next year.

Louderback ran for his 2012 seat on the Board with promises to reconstruct the reservation desk — the system for reserving rooms in the William Pitt Union, Cathedral of Learning and David Lawrence Hall — for student organizations, offer greater wireless Internet service in dorm rooms and implement more green roofs on top of Pitt’s buildings. The projects have reached varying degrees of completion.

A trial run for the reservation system occurred in the summer, leading to the system going fully live in October. While the old system saw a backlog as groups attempted to reserve rooms — requiring a staff member to clear each room for reservation and manually check on room availability, which often took several days for previous in-use rooms to be deemed available — the new system is “streamlined, lessening the communication gap between student groups and the reservation desk” through instantaneous reservations and technology, catering and security forms in one place, Louderback said.

Full wireless implementation in all of the residence halls is in the planning stage and a survey of the halls will be held during winter break to determine feasibility, Louderback said. Partial initiative completion is expected by the end of the next semester, and full implementation is expected within the next few years.

“I can’t propose what kind of wires or prices so [implementation] was more on [the administration’s] end to do all of the technical work. It was my job to push the subject, be persistent and keep expressing that this is what the students want,” he said, adding that he met with administration members at least monthly to discuss project progress.

While the green roofs initiative was not completed, Louderback said that he still feels that he met the basic goals of the initiative by refocusing it to create a larger impact through a permanent Green Fund Advisory Board (GFAB) — a subcommittee of SGB’s Environmental Committee dedicated to dispersing funds solely for “green” or sustainable projects that will no longer have to be voted in yearly by the Board.

“I don’t consider that project an X mark,” Louderback said. “I realized that it was more worth my time to solidify GFAB to have a more sustainable source of funding. By not focusing on one [green roofs] initiative, I worked a little harder to create the foundation for funding 10 or 20 green roofs projects, or the like, in the future.”

Alex Murdoch

Alex Murdoch set out to change residence hall access procedures to allow guests’ state IDs to be used for swiping in, as well as working to increase the number of businesses accepting Panther Funds. He also hoped to facilitate an agreement to allow club sports to use on-campus facilities to practice. While progress has been made on each project, each remains at a phase moving toward future completion dates.

The residence hall ID-swipe system was updated this scholastic year to allow students to swipe in other students using their Pitt IDs. Murdoch hoped to expand swipe-in capabilities to include state IDs for non-Pitt guests and, though he has not checked on the project progress in some time, said the system should be updated to accept state IDs for the start of the new semester.

Murdoch took a “two-fold” approach to his Panther Funds initiative and intended to make the system quicker, more reliable and more accessible to students. He said progress was made on the first part of the initiative and Pitt will require all businesses offering Panther Funds to update to high-speed Internet by Feb. 1. Murdoch said he was unaware of Pitt’s marketing team, which works with businesses to offer the funds, when he took on the initiative, so expanding the program among already established businesses was less successful. Expanding, however, has come in the form of working to get new businesses, such as the Popeye’s that recently opened on Fifth Avenue, to include the Panther Funds option.

Intramural and club sports teams do not currently have access to permanent on-campus competition spaces, but Murdoch said there is a long-term plan to increase practice and competition space through the Office of Student Affairs, including plans to renovate old buildings and possibly build new ones. To continue the completion his initiative, Murdoch said he took on a liaison role with the teams to aid on smaller-scale projects such as organizing practice times.

Additionally, Murdoch assumed former Board member Ryan Gayman’s efforts to utilize the office spaces in the O’Hara Student Center and expanded it to include transforming the building’s basement into a storage space for student organizations. Murdoch said he feels the Board accomplished a great deal during its term.

“Now it’s time to pass the torch and get some new minds in here,” Murdoch said.

Halim Genus

Board member Halim Genus ran on the initiatives of creating short-term community service projects with student groups, getting the Pitt shuttle stops marked and creating a spring Pitt Make A Difference Day.

Genus worked with SGB Transportation and Safety Committee Chairman Richard White to complete his shuttle stops initiative. Stops along the Pitt 10A shuttle will be marked by the start of the new year. The signs, which were designed by White and will read “Pitt Shuttle Stop,” are currently ordered.

Concrete plans have not been made to outline community service projects or to create a system for students to take part in projects around Oakland. While the fall PMADD was considered a success, a spring Pitt Make a Difference Day was not implemented.

In addition to his initiatives, Genus also played a strong role in moving the polling location for students living in Litchfield Towers and the Schenley Quadrangle from Posvar Hall to the William Pitt Union, so that polling locations could be more easily accessed by students.

Genus did not return requests for comment.

The Future Board

Like the 2012 Board, the incoming members will be accountable for their efforts and project completion. While the current Board met with differing levels of success on members’ original initiatives and many took on new projects over the course of their terms, Louderback said initiative completion rates can always be improved.

To foster improvement, Louderback plans to create project deadlines for his Board throughout the term and require weekly updates during the pre-public meeting planning sessions to encourage the collaboration and sharing of ideas. He said minimal effort to complete projects will not be tolerated under his guidance.

“The Board was elected to these positions, and it would be a shame if they waste this opportunity and the role that they were granted by students. I don’t want to see that happen,” he said.

Louderback said he intends to make sure the 2013 Board has access to everything necessary to complete its projects and is always available for assistance.