The DePaulia: Describe what SGA is and what you do on campus.

Casey Clemmons: SGA is the official representative body for students on campus. We’re different from the normal student organization or student club, in that we are an official facet of the university governance structure along with faculty council and staff council. As such, we are involved in a lot of these university conversations. We now have representation on 32 university boards, committees and taskforces _㐠things like college advisory boards all the way to information service advisory boards to tuition pricing committee to invited guests to board of trustees meeting. Basically anything you can think of, we’re probably sitting on it. As an entity we also have our own set of initiatives that we are working on every year.

We are almost entirely elected with the exception of a few positions that are appointed and then voted on by the body _㐠Katelyn is one of them, so our PR coordinator, our graphics coordinator and our parliamentarian are all internally appointed. Then, all the other positions are elected _㐠president, vice president, three executive vice presidents that look over each area of the university- so student affairs, academic affairs, and operations. Then we have a treasurer, and that treasurer serves as the treasurer of SGA but also the chair of the activity fee board. And then, we have senators that represent every college, every year, different constituencies like transfer students, commuter students, and then there are some senators that oversee things like community and government relations within SGA, intercultural awareness and different things like that. Something new that we added on this year in our hopes to build campus affinity and build the conversation that SGA has and what we do- is we’ve started a new liaison system, so we’ve invited a great deal of different groups and constituencies on campus to have a liason to SGA that we don’t necessarily see them being a senator based on their position but just more of a liason so that conduit between us and their respective constituency so they know what we’re doing, we know what they’re doing, so different groups like DePaul Activities Board (DAB), Blue Crew, students with disabilities, LGBTQA student services and some others.

How does the voting process work in the advisory committees? What is your roll at these meetings?

CC: It really differs. Taskforces are typically something that the president of the university or some high-up officials kind of, like we’re having issues with this, we need to improve on this, so there was a sustainability initiatives taskforce, and then an affinity taskforce, so things like that are just kind of building, more so conversations on how to improve those things so there really isn’t voting with things like that. We are more so there as the student voice in the room. That goes for different advisory boards. For example, the information services (IS) board there is a vote, and what that group kind of decides is what information services next project is. They only have so many resources so that group kind of convenes and decides what the next project is so with things like that there is a vote, and then things like tuition pricing and the strategic resource allocation committee there is a vote and I have a vote on both of those. So it really depends, some of them are more generating ideas, others are coming up with a definitive decision on something.

The first SGA initiative listed is college affordability. How will you make college affordable, in terms of tuition, etc.?

CC: The reason its number one on our list is because we think it’s the number one student concern, or one of the biggest student concerns, not only at DePaul but nationwide. As you know, college is getting pricier and pricier and it keeps rising not only here and certainly is rising at higher rates at other institutions different then DePaul, and it’s important to note that because of DePaul’s mission, that we do bring in a lot of these students that wouldn’t normally be able to afford college, so there are different things at DePaul that helps those, a great percentage of students at DePaul get through DePaul. It’s important not to look at DePaul as this big private institution that just really expensive that no one can go to, but in terms of what we’re doing, we have three representatives on the tuition pricing committee and I sit on the strategic resource allocation committee so we’re really going to just voice the student opinion as best as we can in those rooms.

Students don’t want tuition to increase and that’s what we’re going to tell them, obviously, but there’s a lot more behind that conversation, and Sarah and I and Brandon Davis who sit on that committee have met over the summer and had orientations and we’re still orienting ourselves with the whole thing but there’s a lot of data coming from this end, there’s a lot of different things to think about when making these decisions, so we’re just there to be the student voice and make ourselves more knowledgeable. Also, with that, as last year one of our biggest goals was protecting MAP and it ended up being protected, whether that was solely attributed to us I don’t know, I’m sure we had some sort of impact so definitely lobbying for different things like that. As you may have seen, Congress and the president voted to change federal loan interest rates [for students] and while they’re capped and kind of low right now they can increase, but one thing we spearheaded was letting students know about that. Depending on if you get federal loans you might have gotten an email, you might have seen our social media, we were kind of the ones pushing that, letting students know about these decreased interest rates.

Also, things like textbook affordability, Sarah was the point person last year in pushing through textbook affordability legislation through the Illinois state legislature, and Sarah is now the Illinois Board of Higher Education’s student advisory committee chair, so through that we’re looking at different ways to not only lower textbook prices at DePaul but throughout the state. And regulating some federal legislation that already exists about regulating textbook markets and stuff like that. It’s kind of a more broad initiative, it’s kind of us acknowledging that college is more expensive, and doing whatever we can to make it more affordable for students.

Next week at out meeting and the following Thursday, we’re having different administrators that deal with enrollment, tuition pricing, financial aid and the budget of DePaul that are coming to our meetings. They’re open meetings to all our students, and we’re trying to inform students and offer the opportunity for students to talk to these administrators, as you know, they’re not walking around campus every day.

What kind of specific ways would you lower costs of textbooks for students?

Sarah Rens: We’ve kind of done a lot in going through and doing all the work at the state level, I’ve learned a lot and there’s a lot of legislation out there and a lot of research so a lot of that we’ve kind of gone back and are applying to DePaul this year. We’d already been doing a best practices list that we give out to faculty in terms of ways they can do their part to help students either get textbooks more affordably or making sure that are actually using the books they are assigning.

As Casey mentioned, there is already some legislation that relates to textbooks federally and at the state level so we’ve put out a campaign with posters that are in the bookstores and we’ve worked with the bookstores and making sure it was all approved by everybody. The title of the posters is ‘know your rights’ and it lists, according to federal legislation, here’s what you can expect in terms of transparency. Basically, holding the bookstore accountable and it has our email information so it’s like if you’re not seeing this, call us because legally they have to do these four things, so trying to make sure students aware of their rights. And also kind of a big push this year will be the faculty adoptions, because the earlier the faculty chooses what books they are going to use makes a huge difference in several points along the way in how those books are priced. That’s something we can do right here at DePaul too, is telling every faculty member and encouraging them to get their adoptions in as soon as possible.

One of your initiatives is student pride. Do you have any events or things planned for students as part of this initiative?

CC: We’re not really a programming body like DAB, but we do have different events where we try to engage students. We have quarterly mix and mingles in the student center atrium. The first one is at the end of this month, Sept. 30th. We have food, people can come and talk to us, just making ourselves as transparent as possible. We’re going to be having quarterly health forums that focus on different things as well.

Are there any specific sustainability initiatives you guys are considering?

CC: Institutionally, the university has made huge strides towards sustainability. We work very close with facility operations in doing things with the wind turbines, and there are new compost bins in the student center, we work very closely with Chartwells on waste, compost and recycling stuff like that. Even things like cleaning products, and plants that are used for landscaping are more sustainable. We are always involved in those conversations.

What about making course evaluations available to students?

CC: It’s one of our top priorities. Before we even jumped on to doing this three years ago, the college of computing and digital media and the law school already had public course evaluation data online. We jumped into this, said we want data, students deserve to see this. Last year we were successful in getting the theater school and school for new learning on board with that. Fairly soon, they will go online with that. We are going to continue doing this, it’s a long process and we haven’t backed down yet and we had two successes last year.

Our two target schools this year are the college of business and the college of science and health, and we’ve already started conversations with both of them. We’re having SGA respective college senators work on that as well. That’s always one of the bigger things on our list.