Guest speakers make appearance at SGA

Last week’s SGA meeting was full of faculty speakers, the first of which was Ronald Siebring who spoke on behalf of Campus Recreation.

“69 percent of our students participate in Campus Recreation.” said Siebring, director of Sports Facilities and Campus Recreation at SCSU.

Siebring spoke to the SGA to discuss the current activities available through Campus Recreation that he said he felt SGA should be aware of to offer any comments or concerns they may have.

Siebring first addressed the issue of raising the student activity fee by up to one dollar per credit hour to provide free access to the student fitness center to all students, versus the $30 fee per semester that is currently in place.

“I don’t think that we are in the economic situation to do this right now [however] someday, sometime it would be nice that all students can drop in and do free play in the fitness center, like they can in the climbing wall or the gym.” Siebring said.

Siebring moved on by detailing the very popular RecKids program that is offered through SCSU, which consists of various different events geared towards dependants of SCSU faculty, staff and students, although still being open to the general community as well.

Siebring highlighted Super Fridays, a program offered through RecKids.
“[Super Fridays] consist of preparational activities, almost always swimming as well, and crafts and snacks as well, which they [participating children] love,” Siebring said.

Super Fridays take place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays throughout the school year.  

The program is designed for children ranging from 5 to 11 years old with a fee of $8 per child.

Siebring also informed the SGA that the pool in Eastman hall is no longer being used as of this year, even though many swimming and boating activities took place there.

“It is just an old, antiquated pool, and to assist the university in meeting its budget constraints. We closed that this year.”

Jane Olsen, director of the SCSU Women’s Center was also in attendance at Thursday’s meeting to speak with the SGA in order to spread awareness of the Women’s Center.”

“We provide lots of different programming that addresses a wide variety of gender issues including violence, reproductive justice [and] leadership issues. We also do advocacy and support services. 

Most often the areas in which those services are offered are violence against women including rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking [and] dating and domestic assault.”

“There are other issues that people come to the Women’s Center for and it could be crisis pregnancy, [or] talking with an advocate about relationships issues,” Olsen said.

Olson maintained that the vast majority of programs offered through the Women’s Center prove to be very popular, however the Rape Aggression Defense (R.A.D.) program, which has been one of the most successful programs in the past, is losing ground.

“There have been more crime alerts posted on campus this fall that I remember for a period of time, and so we assumed that safety concerns had been heightened. We have had our first session and I really do want to report that we were disappointed and actually surprised at the small number of women that signed up for the class.” Olsen said.

Olsen described the R.A.D. program as “a combination of risk reduction and awareness factors, but you are also learning physical techniques to get our of certain scenarios and situations … we [also] get to do a little kicking and punching work and it is really fulfilling.”

The fee for a nine-hour course is $10, and if the entire course is completed, the student can receive $5 back.

Dan Peterson, Director of Residential Life at SCSU also gave the SGA a quick update on the 5th Avenue Live! project going up near campus.

“The construction is on time right now. We should have a model apartment ready by the first of February that we will begin to actually offer tours of to campus community members.” Peterson said.                                         

Peterson explained how they are currently in the process of choosing a name for the project and the furniture that will eventually be used inside the units.

“We are in the process right now of narrowing down possible names for the facility and we’ll be distributing the short list of names for consideration for that facility to campus in the next couple of weeks … to give us some feedback before we forward a final recommendation to President Potter.” Peterson said.

“We are also going to be posting a furniture showcase in Garvey during the month of October to allow students to comment on what they like and don’t like.”

Peterson ended by saying that sign-up for the new units of 5th Avenue Live! will be begin in mid-February for the following academic year.