Voicing concerns, addressing issues and informing the students is what the Student Government Association (SGA) strives for every year. This past year’s 2007-2008 SGA president, Marco Cepeda, and vice president, Jacinto Casas, had many accomplishments, but, like former SGA officers, had to struggle with student apathy.
           
At the beginning of the semester, Cepeda said he had three steps toward his goal of ending student apathy. They were to actively market SGA events, give away incentives such as gift cards at events, and obtain feedback from class representatives on students’ concerns.

 “My main goal was getting more students involved in our events and, compared to previous years, we had really great turnouts in all of our events,” Cepeda said.

According to Cepeda and Casas, the events held this year were successful from “Dinner With the Deans” to “Homeless Awareness Week,” and, of course, the open forums.

Both leave SGA with some issues that they hope will be addressed next year such as “forming a security committee with Chief (A.J.) Sandoval, (and) a healthy lifestyle program that Dr. Pollack’s office wants to start,” said Cepeda, who has discussed these issues with the new SGA president, Carlos Gonzalez.

Other accomplishments of the year include installation of the duck crossing sign and the 24-hour lab, which finally was implemented this year.

“The reason for the success of SGA this year is because of the team I had around me,” said Cepeda.

According to Cepeda, an issue that students are concerned about is minimum wage and he said he has brought up this problem to the administration.

He added that “a lot of students have been concerned about the minimum wage increase and the lack of money going to the budgets. The budgets aren’t tight and, as of right now, the administration still stands by not increasing those budgets.”

SGA is taking action and hearing students’ concerns, but yet there are those students who say that SGA doesn’t do much for them. In response, Casas said, “There’s always a group of students that say SGA hasn’t done anything, (and) it’s just something that we all encounter.”

He also added that they were out there marketing themselves through fliers, e-mail and posters. Both Cepeda and Casas agree that they tried their best to voice students’ concerns and to reach out to them.

For the new SGA officers, Cepeda advises “to keep doing what we did this year and build upon it.” Also, Casas said, “It’s a good team because these guys are not starting from scratch because a lot of these guys are returning members.”