One of the concerns that was brought up at our last meeting was that there might be an issue with authority or “power trips” if we had a traditional government with a president and so on. I tried to take that into consideration as I thought about how we might structure the government. (However, I think its a bit silly to think that we’re going to somehow avoid problems that have plagued SGA’s since the beginning of time.)
I haven’t gotten in touch other other student governments directly, so my ideas might change after I talk with them specifically about this step in setting up the student government, but here are my initial ideas:
I though the obvious thing to start would to have a representative from each major. Lets call them Senators; there would be 15 of them.
- baking & pastry
- culinary arts
- culinary management
- digital film & video
- digital print production
- fashion design
- fashion marketing
- graphic design
- industrial design
- interior design
- media arts & animation
- photography
- visual effects
- visual merchandising
- web/interactive media
That seems like a lot to me, so I wonder if it would be possible to combine some of the majors.
Baking & Pastry and the Culinary programs would probably have similar interests, and could probably be represented by a single senator. Same for the fashion programs (and perhaps visual merchandising?). That brings us to 10 or 11 Senators, which seems a lot more reasonable. Collectively, what might these senators be called?
A lot of schools also have representatives for different aspects of the schools operations.
At AIPH, we have 3700 students, and only 900 of them live in housing (if my numbers are correct). Even if they’re off though, a significantly larger number of students are commuting than are living on campus. I think it would be wise to give them representation in the government. This person would probably be someone who worked with SEPTA to get discounts to students, and arrange transportation to off-campus events.
I think we also need represenatives with the following responsibilities (though I don’t know what their titles might be):
General Student Activities: Someone who would oversee school activities and events as a whole. I would see this job having a lot of responsibility and very close to what a President might do. This person would work closely with Student Affairs.
Clubs: Someone to work closely with clubs, to give them a central person to help clubs collaborate on events, and to improve awareness of events among the student body.
Public Relations: Someone to work with area schools to throw larger events that might be otherwise outside the scope of either school. This could potentially give us access to better venues for events. (I’m thinking big here).
Thats what I’ve got for now… Updates to come as I speak with other schools.
–Andrew Vrydaghs
