Student Government making progress amidst challenges

Classes have been in session for just over a month now on the campus of Coastal Carolina and hidden among the hustle and bustle of everyday college life is your campus Student Government Association (SGA) members hard at work to make CCU a thriving campus.

According to Coastal Carolina’s website, the mission of SGA is to “provide Coastal Carolina University students with representation, services and advocacy within the Coastal Carolina University community”.

Before this new semester started back in August, two new positions were created: Chief of Staff and Chief of Justice.

The Chief of Staff is responsible for helping keep things organized around the office, keep up with attendance, sending emails and assisting e-board with anything they need help with. The Chief of Staff is also in charge of the Academic Affairs committee, in that committee we focus on the student body's academic needs/wants. The Chief of Justice is in charge of keeping up with members attendance, conducting hearings for when senators have too many absences or does something unethical on or off campus. The Chief of Justice is responsible for keeping up the ethic and judiciary committee and those members help conduct hearings.

Rae’L Jackson, Vice President of Public Relations, elaborated as to why these positions were created.

“When there were only a few positions, it was hard for the previous executive board to handle their responsibilities and more,” said Jackson. “So, in turn, these positions were created to help SGA run more smoothly.”

Jackson says that while the first few weeks were difficult with the new positions, the Chief of Staff and Chief of Justice have really grown into their roles.

“At first the Chief of Staff didn’t really understand the job, but she kept asking questions and has been able to help us out in more ways than one.”

Jackson also talked about the benefits that have come with the two new positions.

“These positions have been super beneficial as it helps the rest of the executive board be able to handle their own responsibilities,” said Jackson. “These new positions are great because we are able to split off responsibilities for events so that no person has to do more than another.”

Hurricane Dorian, which forced campus to be closed the first full week of September, withheld SGA from working on several pieces of legislation. While Dorian didn’t keep Coastal out for as long as Florence did in 2018, there are still some challenges that come with being out for a significant amount of time.

“The hurricane threw us off completely because we were in the middle of elections and the cut-off date approached during the break,” said Jackson. “Once we returned we extended that intent to run form dates by a few days to increase submission. We didn't get many people to apply so we decided to induct who we had and continued to regular schedule.”

The SGA Regional Retreat is coming and that is one of the biggest things the executive board and all of SGA are working towards

“We have been sending out emails to schools across the Carolina's but the hurricane has delayed numerous responses, so we resent the email,” said Jackson. “For the most part we are fine and thank God we’re on the right track.”