Bijeta Lamichhane
News Editor
The Student Government Association (SGA) has recently appointed a new senator and a secretary to their Senate. Carly McWilliams ’22 is the new sec- retary and Ivan Akiri ’22 is the new class senator for SGA.
According to Grace O’Leary ’20, service chair of SGA, the organization added a new member to the Senate after their secretary stepped down and an existing senator, Mc- Williams, took on that role. “As such, we had a vacancy on the general Senate and needed to fill it as to continue to rep- resent the student body as a whole,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary also laid out the re- sponsibilities of these roles. “The secretary is in charge of taking minutes at each of our meetings,” she informed. “These minutes allow for any member of SGA or anyone interested in what SGA is do- ing to look back on our dis- cussions. The secretary plays a vital role since without the minutes it would be difficult to understand what SGA has done so far.”
“A senator must be in at least one committee, attend the weekly Senate meetings, and generally be willing to be an advocate for the Wooster stu- dent body,” she concluded.
McWilliams joined SGA as a first year in order to work towards supporting students’ well-being at the College. “As a first year, I was extremely impressed with the amount of student involvement in vari- ous organizations and groups across campus,” she stated. “I ran for SGA in the spring semester because I was pas- sionate about this diverse community housed within the College, and I felt equipped to create effective change in sup- port of students’ well-being here.”
On the other hand, Akiri became interested in being a member of SGA after joining First-Year Governance Coun- cil (FYGC), which teaches first-year students about lead- ership on campus. “Through [FYGC], my interest in being part of SGA piqued and my eagerness to help out my fel- low students grew,” he said.
As a secretary and a sena- tor of SGA, both McWilliams and Akiri plan to work on im- proving students’ life at the College.
McWilliams stated that al- though transitioning from serving as a class senator to SGA’s secretary comes with some challenges, she is excited to work with the rest of the Executive Board to make sure SGA functions effectively as a governing body. “One of the most important responsibilities of the secretary is re- cording the minutes of every general meeting, and because these minutes are public on SGA’s website, I want to emphasize accuracy and transparency in my work for the benefit of the student body,” McWilliams said. “I hope that through the role of secretary, I can increase students’ aware- ness of the projects and issues SGA works on throughout the rest of this year.”
Likewise, as an SGA senator, Akiri aims to help students make college opportunities accessible to students. “What I look to achieve through my role as an SGA senator is to help my fellow students get the most out of Wooster and feel comfortable studying here,” he stated. “I also look forward to working with other organizations and aim for improving the life of the students on cam- pus and hear out their problems and take them forward to the faculty.”