On Monday, the second town hall meeting of the semester with Oswego State President Deborah Stanley met in the Marano Campus Center auditorium. These meetings serve as a way for the student body, administration and faculty to speak frankly with Stanley and other high-ranking administrators about issues facing the community on campus.

The issues mentioned in this most recent meeting mainly came from Student Association members. Among them were Ethan Magram, a freshman and the senator from Johnson Hall, Omar van Reenen from Hart Hall and Emily Nassir, the president of SA.

The first issue mentioned, brought up by Magram, was on the topic of data collection methods on campus. The Oswego State SA recently went to a larger conference with multiple SUNY schools and at this conference, the topic of student satisfaction and data collection on student opinion was covered.

After much deliberation on the topic, it was discovered that Oswego State conducts a vast amount of surveys, but the information that results from these data collection surveys does not seem to be shared among the departments of the school or with SA. Stanley proposed an amalgamation of this data into a single release of information on student satisfaction and opinion on campus services, to be shared with all the necessary departments.

Another issue mentioned was the idea of shared governance where SA, being elected by the student body, has a say in the various departments on campus by being represented on more decision-making boards within the campus community.

“Emily [Nassir] just let me know about the idea,” Stanley said. “I think it’s great.”

Stanley acknowledged the great degree to which governance is shared with the SA, as representatives of SA sit on the general education and the academic policy councils, as well as on Campus Concept, the planning board for renovations made to campus.

“Student Association works collaboratively with the president’s office to put these town halls on,” Nassir said.

An issue was posed to Stanley and the faculty present that SA senators do not see as much engagement as they expect to see from their constituents and that people don’t come to senator’s office hours but will mention issues in casual conversation. SA proposed posting a table with representatives to hear grievances in Marano Campus Center was posed to give SA more visibility among the students it represents.

“It’s especially useful for us at the Student Association because we also advocate for students,” Magram said.

The town hall meetings work as a tool for SA to learn about the needs of the students just as much as it is for the administration to learn about those needs.

According to van Reenen, “Mostly the topics talked about here give us an idea on the resolutions we should pass or discuss.”