As students move into their dorms and apartments, the Student Government Association executive board members will be taking the seats as student representatives. Last spring, they earned their current seats by campaigning as the Building Bridges ticket. Their yellow construction hats and safety-orange shirts seemed to have convinced the students that they had indeed rolled up their sleeves to build some bridges connecting the students to each other and to the administration.

Really? The student government is promising, yet again, to connect students to the administration. What else is new?

Building Bridges promised a smooth channel of communication between the student body and the administration.

Maybe the fact that this executive board has managed to visually represent its primary duty, it is more believable that they will live up to it. A visual representation, however, is only the beginning of understanding SGA’s critical role.

Don’t forget that even though SGA has administrative power, they are of the students, and an advocate for the students. It is their job to take student initiatives and bring them up to the administration, making sure that the University is a safe and healthy environment for the students.

Senate must remember that, often, the students know best the problems they face and the needs they have, so they should keep in regular check with them.

And students must be continuously critical of the leaders they voted into power, keeping expectations high, as the new executive board takes office.

Building Bridges began its campaign in flash mobs out on the floors of the quad in the cold of February. The candidates intermingled with the student body, and that is the level of devotion students will expect from their year in office. They may not care as much for the ambitious promises SGA makes, as they do for a fist bump in the quad and someone to lend an ear to their grievances.