Committees in OU's Undergraduate Student Congress are working to collaborate more with other student organizations and the general student body this year.
After the racist events of last spring, the university administration implemented a new diversity and inclusion plan designed to help better represent the student body as a whole, and SGA congress plans to keep university leaders accountable on it.
Congress Chair Emma DeAngeli said congress members will work to understand the university’s diversity and inclusion plan more fully, as well as making sure it’s as effective as possible. She will also work to attract members of congress that reflect OU students more accurately.
Even with these goals established, however, DeAngeli said she wants the congressional committees to be able to choose what they work on.
“One thing that ... I really wanted to do was give committees and committee chairs a lot of freedom with what they do, but just generally be like, ‘Hey, it would be really cool if you could do this, or work this in there somehow,’” DeAngeli said.
Human Diversity Committee Chair Lauren Miller said something she’s working on is giving her committee more of a presence on campus this year. She said the group is aiming to create a sense of community and diversity on campus, and that community also includes the administration.
Miller said she welcomes comments from individual students and encourages them to visit her in her office hours, which are Monday and Wednesday from 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the Conoco Student Leadership Center.
“I feel like we do a lot of things with race, which is great, and it needs to be talked about, and it needs to be done, but I really wanted to expand it a little more to gender and sexuality, and things like that,” Miller said.
Miller said she wants international students especially to feel welcomed on campus and wants her committee to collaborate more with other student organizations on campus in the coming months.
“Every event that we hold, I think, should be partnered with somebody else because I don’t want to speak for everyone,” Miller said. “I want them to tell me what they need, and then I can do that.”
Sustainability Committee Chair Gina Werdel said she also wants to involve both students and student organizations more with her committee’s efforts. She said the committee has partnered heavily with the Student Environmental Coalition in the past and wants to continue to do that.
Werdel said the Student Environmental Coalition has existed for five or six years, but it got implemented as a part of the executive branch of SGA just two years ago. DeAngeli said the coalition was implemented as a part of SGA to give it more authority, and it technically remains under the executive branch as a special board.
The coalition consists of representatives from environmental clubs on campus and coordinates efforts to make on-campus activities more sustainable.
“The whole idea of the body existing is so that we can communicate with each other and support one another,” Werdel said. “The people who established the club long before it was a part of SGA, they felt like there were so many environmental things (happening) on campus but nobody was talking to each other, (and) nobody was supporting one another.”
Werdel said the Student Environmental Coalition and the sustainability committee have been closely connected for the last few years, and DeAngeli and Werdel have been chairs of both groups. Werdel said she and DeAngeli have “just sort of picked up the scraps” left by the students involved in the two groups before them.
“It’s basically just about making environmental activism on campus easier for those that want to do it and just building those connections,” Werdel said.
Campus Outreach, Concerns and Safety Committee Chair Mark Mayes said the committee has undergone a large reform — including a name change — to encourage more collaboration with students.
Mayes said he felt the committee’s old name, Problems and Projects, was too broad because all the congressional committees deal with problems and projects.
“For most people, they’re going to read the committee name and go on about their day,” Mayes said. “Just changing the name, it makes it easier for the student to have their problems addressed, in my opinion.”
Mayes said the committee was reformed to allow for more work with the department of inclusivity and the department of the interior and narrow the scope of the committee.
“(Mayes) also wants to do a little bit more with outreach, and I’m really excited for that because it’s just him sort of defining what exactly is going to happen underneath this new name,” DeAngeli said.
Mayes said his plans for the committee include light walks, Positive Action Day and an RSO surplus trade, and he encourages students to submit comments to the committee’s suggestion box.
“I see the goals of fostering diversity and inclusion creating an inclusive congress, thus amplifying voices that may go unheard otherwise,” DeAngeli said. “I also see congress becoming a more widely known resource for students from which to seek help with changing campus for the better.”
