by Zachary Petroff | staff writer
March 31, 2022
Even though the official results of Duquesne’s Student Government Association (SGA) have not been officially released, the annual election saw “historic numbers” in terms of voter turnout according to the re-elected Vice President of Communications, Ethan Delp. Through Campus Link students were able to vote for members on the executive board, open senate seats, Residence Hall Association (RHA) representatives and the Commuter council.
On Wednesday March 23, in order to get more voter participation, the SGA set up a table on the third floor of the Student Union where students could partake in making campaign buttons, register for lucrative prizes, and enjoy donuts from Peace, love and Little Donuts.
“I was very surprised because a lot of times when students see tabeling they will avoid it or try not to make eye contact just because they’re busy. I was very surprised and happy to see the amount of engagement we got to people just coming up and being interested in what we were doing,” Delp said. “It shows that our efforts were fruitful, and it’s something that I am definitely committed to for next year: making a big deal out of elections.”
While voter turn-out was greater than most years, involvement in SGA continues to look for members to participate in student government. The SGA is still looking for members to fill the numerous vacant senate seats.
According to the newly elected vice president of student life, Nathan Giercznski, and Claudio Simione, vice president of finance; as of now the School of Business, the School of Liberal Arts nor the School of nursing have any senatorial seats filled.
Every student is a senator-at-large and has the ability to become a senator for their specific school of study through an annual election or through a matriculation process. The matriculation process requires students to come to two consecutive SGA meetings and fulfill official office hours by sitting in a senate office during official hours.
Once these requirement are met, students can petition to become a senator, in which the existing members of the senate will hold a vote.
Currently, the SGA has around 22 participants with only 16 members acting in the Congress leaving many senatorial seats for the various schools on campus unrepresented.
“We organized this event with some giveaways for election day to try to promote SGA because as backwards as you may think, we don’t really like to run unopposed,” Giercznski said. “We’d like to have as many students as possible involved in SGA.”
While SGA does not have overall power to supplement sweeping changes, they are able to use their connections to make various changes when needed such as the continuation of the “Covid Rebuilding Fund” that allotted a certain amount of money in the budget to help clubs rebuild income lost due to Covid.
The commencement for the 51 senate will be on April 10th in room 203 of the Law Building. This meeting will be open to all of the student body.
