2008 Woodie Awards
SGA Column
Erin Ahern
Issue date: 12/4/04 Section: Campus Life
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I'm sure most of you will agree that Thanksgiving is one of the best holidays. Sure, we just sit around and eat all day (which is great), but we also get to see our friends and family, as well as enjoy a nice break away from school. This break always seems to come at a perfect time, too; Right when we are all beginning to really get stressed, we get to go home and relax before beginning the seemingly endless amount of papers and finals.
This year, the SGA Executives had a little longer break as we attended the National Conference on Student Leadership in Orlando, FL during the weekend preceding Thanksgiving break. The executives have been attending this annual conference for many years and it always proves to be a very valuable experience. This year was no exception, and I must admit that the beautiful 80 degree weather all weekend in Florida didn't hurt either.
During the conference, we attended keynote speakers, various workshops, and also had a great opportunity to meet students from all over the country, including some students from UCONN and Buffalo State. It was interesting to talk to other SGA executives to see how their student governments are run and to share the positive and negative aspects of each. We all gained some very helpful feedback on how to improve our organization.
One of the most enlightening parts to this conference came during a workshop that we attended titled "Building Bridges with the Big 'A(dministration)'." There were about sixty students in this workshop from a wide range of backgrounds. Some students came from large state universities, others from community colleges, some from small private schools like Assumption, and everything in between. The workshop focused on understanding the type of administration we are working with and how to develop strategies moving toward a more positive relationship with them. Since many things seem to have come up this semester regarding relationships between students and administrators, we felt this may be a valuable workshop and that we may be able to find ways to improve our relationship with administration. We were actually very surprised by the conclusions we came to after this workshop.