Recent concerns from Penn State Behrend’s Student Government Association (SGA) regarding student involvement in SGA activities led members of the organization to establish student suggestion boxes around campus last week. “It’s important, I think as a Student Government, to also be concerned about what students are dealing with,” said junior JP Jarecki, president of the SGA.

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Placed on tables outside Bruno’s Café in the Reed Union Building and the Clark Café in the Burke REDC, the boxes were designed to allow students to write suggestions and comments on how to improve the campus for members of the SGA to later read and act upon.

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“We put them out so that we would have an idea of what people would want to see,” said sophomore Alexa Hueston, the SGA’s Director of Student Affairs and the driving force behind the suggestion boxes.

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This is the second year the SGA has experimented with the boxes, and expectations vary widely across members of the executive board. An optimistic Jarecki anticipates responses regarding the recent closure of the Elements Café and the Clipper food truck and the parking on campus, while Hueston adopts a more realistic viewpoint and is reluctant to anticipate many responses.

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The SGA is open to student responses on any topic, including those regarding the organization itself. “I think the expectation is that the surveys are about how we can help the students, but of course if there was a suggestion about how someone on the outside or someone who’s potentially in the organization thinks that the SGA could improve, we’d be more than willing to hear that kind of feedback,” explained Jarecki.

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Setting up the boxes required coordination with the Office of Student Activities and staff members at both Bruno’s and the Clark Café. Tables were reserved for member senators to oversee the boxes and encourage student responses.

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The SGA plans on implementing the most popular of the suggestions, something they have done in the past with issues related to food prices.

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“The student government operates on a bunch of different levels… Now if it’s a bigger issue, I’ll meet with the people that are concerned,” said Jarecki.

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For sophomore Brooke Burdick, the boxes represented an opportunity for members of the student body to present opinions and ideas to the SGA anonymously through the boxes.

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“I just expect them (the SGA) to make this experience at Penn State Behrend better and help to guide the students’ interests in the right direction,” said Burdick.

 

As of now, the SGA has opted to continue the boxes for another week to allow students who may not have had the opportunity to submit a response to do so. After that the organization will be putting up better structured boxes to be left around long term. The organization encourages students to submit responses as they see fit.

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“We want to have voices from every student and students of all types and people who maybe aren’t as involved on campus. We just want to have everyone’s input to see what we could do to fix things that we aren’t seeing,” said Hueston. “We definitely just want to be receptive to the students and see what everyone wants us to do. We’d be willing to do whatever they want us to do to better the campus.”