By Joe Pinter, News Editor, @JPinter93

ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. (Oct. 19) — During its weekly meeting, the St. Bonaventure University Student Government Association discussed five topics, including Brown and White Night and the March of Dimes.

 Afterward, SGA gave the floor to students presenting their campus club.

Abby Harrington, SGA vice president, led a discussion on the course evaluation system and whether it should be kept as is or changed.

“I sit in on the faculty senate, and they addressed to me that there is a problem that we don’t have enough participation in the course evaluations,” Harrington said.

Cody Clifford, SGA president, said that the participation has dropped from 68 percent to 42 percent within the past year. This trend coincides with all evaluations switching from in-class forms to online forms.

Some changes to the evaluation system were considered, including giving out evaluations the last day of class, making the evaluations shorter, giving students even more time to take them and the professors designating a time at the end of the last class of the semester when the students use their laptops to complete the evaluations.

When it was put to a vote, the SGA officers were even-split. But the two most favorable options were keeping the current system and having students do the evaluations on their laptops in class.

 In other business, the officers concluded the March of Dimes had been a success.

“We had about 20-25 teams participating,” said Robbie Chulick, SGA executive secretary. “About 15 of them were SGA clubs or student-oriented teams.”

Chulick also added that $45,000 had been raised. However, that number is likely to go up since the online fundraising will not end until next Friday, Oct. 26.

The four groups that raised the most money:

*The Buzz

*The Bona Venture

*SBU Resident Assistants

*SGA/Townhouse 25

Heather Pfeil, March of Dimes community director, said 300-400 walkers participated in the event.

The next item on the agenda was the introduction of the new Class of 2016 SGA officers.

They are as follows: Kelsey Koos, president; Megan Cutia, vice president; Kendra Worley, secretary; Diane Adegoke, treasurer.

SGA recently altered the duties of the freshmen officersto mainly watch and learn how SGA is run while still planning a few community events.

After the floor was opened for club presentations, five clubs presented while two clubs did not have a representative at the meeting.

Asian Students in Action (ASIA), Latin American Student Organization (LASO), Black Student Union (BSU), Voices, Step Team, Spectrum, SBU Hip Hop, and Bonacoustics all presented. Each club is chartered by SGA.

ASIA, LASO, BSU, Voices, the Step Team and the Hip Hop Team all spoke to the SGA officers and used PowerPoints to explain the goals and ideas their clubs have.

The highlights of this segment of the meeting:

 Voices helped pay for the speaker from Burma that was on campus on Wednesday. The officers were approached by SGA and decided to help bring the speaker to Bonaventure.

Voices will also be selling club t-shirts for $12 a piece starting next week.

The Step Team will host its seventh annual talent show on Nov. 7. This is just one of many fundraisers the club has planned.

The Hip Hop team announced that it performed to a sold-out Quick Arts Center crowd on Monday night, making $1,750.

According to team captain Caitlin Welch, the money goes to a special place. 

“We are donating to a family originally from Jamestown, now living in South Carolina,” Welch said. “It is for a couple married one year ago who are hoping to adopt a child with special needs from Uganda.  The child they are hoping to adopt is 3 years old and is struggling with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.  The grand total they need to raise in order to adopt is $25,000 and prior to our show they had raised $15,000 already.”

The team now has 43 members and the number is rising. The club is growing and will perform at halftime at almost every home basketball game. The team has been working with the Olean School of Dance to help the younger kids. Additionally, it will host a Christmas show from Nov. 27-28.

Spectrum and Bonacoustics were not present at the meeting.

pinterjo11@bonaventure.edu