Penn State student government plans statewide coalition

Student government leaders at Penn State plan to form a statewide coalition with their… Student government leaders at Penn State plan to form a statewide coalition with their counterparts at Pitt, Temple and Lincoln universities.

“The plans are very much in the beginning phases,” said Colleen Smith, governmental affairs chairwoman for the University Park Undergraduate Association.

Smith has not contacted the other state-related schools’ student government leaders, but said she plans to do so in the near future. Her goal is to have an initial meeting by April that would serve as a “brainstorming process.”

The universities could benefit by being able to communicate about the issues they have in common, such as tuition and state appropriations, she said.

“Even though we may have differences, I urge people to work together and look at the bigger picture,” Smith said.

Smith said after meeting with the United States Student Association and attending a Big Ten Student Conference, she learned that many other states have statewide coalitions as well.

Pitt Student Government Board President Charlie Shull said he heard the coalition was in the planning stages. Shull said persuing a coalition is “tremendous” and by “pulling our resources together, we can advance our own institutions.”

Sean O’Connell, services review chair of the Temple Student Government, said he hadn’t heard about the statewide coalition but noted that Temple’s student body president, Kylie Patterson, formed a similar coalition with Philadelphia-area schools  — the Philadelphia Student Government Caucus.

The caucus, whose first meeting will be held March 20, includes St. Joseph’s, Drexel and La Salle universities, as well as other schools from the Philadelphia area.

O’Connell said representatives from each school can put together issues to discuss at the meeting. The caucus is designed to represent students who represent a large part of the population and to give them “more of a voice in city issues,” he said.

Penn State has worked with Temple in the past to form a tuition coalition, and schools learned from the project, Smith said.

The tuition coalition is much smaller in scale than what is planned with the student government leaders, Smith said.