In its briefest meeting this semester, the Student Government Association spent the better part of one hour discussing the positive things a few members had learned at the Conference of Student Government Associations held Feb. 24-27, at Texas A&M University.Scott Duplantis, SGA president; Deanna Duet, arts and sciences senator; Matthew Ford, senator-at-large; and Jarrod Gonzales, education senator, were the attendees.
“We realized Louisiana’s SGA system is awesome. We are one of the nation’s best SGAs as far as us here and throughout the Louisiana system,” Duplantis said.
“We talked about mission structures, ethics, meetings, fee allocations, retention of senators, all these different things. In another discussion, we discussed SGAs’ relations with administrations and students, faculty and students, organizations and advisers. It was really positive.”
Duplantis said some schools allow executive board members and senators to register classes first. He said this might be good idea for Nicholls.
“The reason for this is because we have our meetings at 4:30. I know a lot of people have night classes.”
It would be really convenient, Duplantis said, if “we can all schedule ourselves around the same time.”
Duet said she learned some interesting things.
“One of the schools up there does tax-free textbooks,” Duet said.
She said this practice, if implemented at Nicholls, could save students dozens of dollars every semester.
Ford spoke of the faculty evaluations other universities conduct.
“Their evaluations are more in-depth, and they get a bigger response because they use online evaluations, and the school uses the online evaluation results for rating professors and classes,” he said.
SGA adviser Dr. Joanne Ferriot, vice president for student affairs, said the belief that Nicholls’s SGA system is excellent is a belief that students normally bring back from the conference.
She said the SGA secretary is a major contributor to this excellence.
“A major part of it is Mrs. Elaine [Musso],” Ferriot said.
In official business, the senate tabled a motion to allocate $1,641.45 for the purchase of hundreds of plates, saucers and cups for the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute.
Duplantis said the executive board has resumed work on the freshman class gift project. The purpose of the project is for freshman to decide on some project(s) to dedicate to the University.
“The project, something that the board and I worked on last semester, got derailed for awhile. We checked into the legalities of it. All the legalities came back positive, so it looks like we’re going to take the next step,” Duplantis said.
Sarah Profumo, English junior from Houma, and Sarah Muller, management senior from Folsom, were admitted to the judicial board. Profumo was appointed by Ferriot and Muller was appointed by Dr. Donald Ayo, university president.
Duplantis announced that he had received some letters of thanks.
“I got a thank-you letter from Mrs. Angie Hammerli thanking us again for the $950 that we contributed for different events,” he said. He urged the senators to support the Jubilee events.
He also received a letter from Anke Tonn, interlibrary loan librarian, thanking the senate for its help in the Cajun Zeydeco festival last month.
