If you are a president, coordinator or officer of a chartered student organization and you are not familiar with the House of Governors, it would be in your best interest to get in touch with Babette Thornton.
As the Student Government Association executive vice president, Thornton serves as the chairperson of the House. Besides Thornton, the House consists of the president, or a chosen representative, of each CSO at Saint Louis University. The House is designed to provide CSOs with an open forum through which they can “better address current issues facing student life and student activities on campus,” according to the SGA Web site.
The House held its first meeting on Tuesday at 5 p.m. in room 201 of the Busch Memorial Center.
This meeting served as an introduction for the CSO representatives to each other. It also gave the opportunity for these groups to establish the lines of communication among SLU’s organizations. The direction in which Thornton hopes to guide the House of 2001-2002 was also discussed, along with the basics for getting started.
Funding and account issues that determine much of what CSOs are capable of doing were addressed at this meeting by Janice Harris, a financial coordinator from Student Development and Business Administration. Harris also explained the changes made to the process of accessing student accounts.
The proposal of having a monthly calendar of events for each student that would feature all of SLU’s CSO activities was introduced.
A decision on this idea will be made at a later meeting, once the topic can be further researched and debated; one of the foreseeable drawbacks of the calendar is the possible cost students might have to absorb.
Anh Vo, the House representative for Students Together Against Racial Tension (START), was pleased with the ideas presented at the meeting.
But Vo did express concerns about the possibility of students set having to pay for the monthly calendars, on top of last semester’s approved increase of the student activity fee.
Another focus of the first House meeting was on the necessity of organizations to register.
If a student organization does not register with the University, it is difficult for that organization to attract and recruit student. It can also prove difficult for the organization to collaborate with other student organizations.
One of the House’s goals is to make the campus aware of CSOs and what they have to offer, but Thornton stressed that if an organization is not registered, then the House does not know it exists. Thornton said that she is “here to address the needs of the chartered student organizations,” but she can only assist the ones she knows about.
The tentative number of CSOs on SLU’s campus is 65, but that is likely to change in the near future, as organizations complete the registering process.
The regular House meetings will be the last Tuesday of every month in the Argentum Room of the BMC at 5 p.m.
