SGA Settling In for the New Semester

From club charters to student life improvements, SGA is busy getting to work.

The board and faculty advisor of one of the newly chartered clubs on campus, Women in Media. Photo by Jessica Crawford

Marist College’s Student Government Association is still settling into the new semester, and one of their most pressing matters to address is the founding of new clubs on campus.

At any given point, there are usually two or three new clubs being formed on campus, and this semester is no exception. Currently, a pair of clubs are petitioning SGA for approval — the Marist Car Club and Women in Media.

The Marist Car Club is an organization planning to educate its members on proper car care and maintenance. 

“They focus on educational aspects of automotive care…they're talking about cars and how to make sure that students know how to read [things like] their tire pressure,” said Evan Spillane ‘25, who serves as SGA’s executive vice president. “People were concerned about, ‘Are people just going to bring loud cars [on campus?]’ but that's not the point of that club.” 

The club is now chartered by SGA and is looking for new members.

The second club chartered this semester is Women in Media, which focuses on under-represented female voices in marketing, film and media. 

“The Car Club was nice for the student body to have, but the Women in Media club was needed,” said Spillane. 

SGA has also heard complaints about the state of campus — a lack of available parking is a big issue impacting students. SGA has heard those complaints and has been working with the college’s Office of Safety and Security to fix them. Students recently may have noticed drones in the sky over campus; those are Marist security drones that are working to analyze the statistics present in the campus’ parking problem, which the office hopes will lead to new insights and improvements. 

Another issue facing SGA is food prices on campus. 

“The value of a meal swipe outside of something like the dining hall is $10, as everyone knows, but the prices of the meals themselves have been raised,” said Spillane. “We’re taking a look at that, reevaluating it, which is a really, really complicated process…we have to make sure that everything in the legal and contract [realms] are spoken to about how to change that before it gets changed.” 

Spillane also discussed the yearly elections and how there were many more candidates than usual. While there are typically only a few candidates, this year there were seven. Even after the petitioning stage, four presidential candidates made it to the final round, accompanied by numerous hopefuls for other positions, including executive vice president, treasurer and secretary. 

Spillane believes SGA’s outreach efforts have created more competitive races. 

“We put out a lot of information about how to sign up for them and how to get people interested, and we spent a lot of time working with our Director of Elections Conor Larkin ‘26. He did a really good job reaching people and making sure that they knew the opportunities available to them.”

As the semester settles into its rhythm, members of SGA are excited to hit the ground running to see how they can improve student lives.