Wednesday’s Student Government Association meeting hosted guest speaker Kent Porterfield, who spoke with the senators about Student Development’s upcoming and ongoing projects. Porterfield updated the students on the many task progressions, such as that of finding SLU’s future food provider.

“Believe it or not, we’re on schedule,” said Porterfield. He stated that they have determined two candidates for the dining services contract: Aramark and Sodexo. According to Porterfield, Chartwells “could not have been more gracious” about losing the contract and plans to do its best in serving SLU until their contract ends. He also addressed the common concern of job retention for the front-line staff.

“We would like as many of those folks to be interviewed and hired,” Porterfield said

He then addressed Student Development’s many future plans for SLU, including that of athletic rebranding. Plans to rebrand SLU’s athletic marks and ‘look’ – including uniforms, logos, etc. – will be implemented in April.

Other initiatives include a suicide prevention campaign, a student veterans success task force and an intergroup dialogue pilot for U101. Porterfield enthusiastically relayed these future plans and commented on the progress that has been made thus far, saying that this year feels different from last year’s more challenging situation.

“We’re trying to be very proactive as opposed to reactive,” he stated. “It’s about education, it’s about building community…so we’re excited about some of those things.”

SGA questioned the future housing and food plans as well, and Porterfield remarked that Student Development will be addressing both situations in a diligent manner, saying “We won’t cut quality corners.”