Editorial Board
This past Saturday, Sept. 13, Student Senate held their first of what is now to be an annual RSO S.W.A.G. summit.
S.W.A.G., standing for “Students Working to Achieve Greatness,” aims “to get all of our outstanding student leaders on campus in the same location at the same time…to learn about certain aspects of leadership and campus resources alike to make us all more efficient and effective,” according to Austin Aldag, president of Student Senate.
The summit, held from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., mainly focused on leadership building skills, and offered a variety of activities to attend during the two breakout sessions. Leaders were able to decide which breakout sessions to attend based on the needs of their RSO. These breakout sessions proved to be helpful to many RSO leaders—senior Krystal Randazzo included.
“During the two break out sessions, an activity that stood out to me was one entitled ‘True Colors.’ In this activity, we took a small personality test in order to determine which of the four colors best represented our personality and leadership style. In this activity I was surprised to tell how accurately it described me and how similar the people of the same colors were to me,” Randazzo said.
With few events where RSO leaders can actually connect and meet other leaders, the S.W.A.G. summit was a great way to form connections. Maybe in the future this can facilitate more programming and teamwork between RSOs on campus.
“In terms of turnout, we exceeded our goals with having over 100 students in attendance representing almost all of our RSO on campus. This was quite amazing to see!” said Aldag.
There were some concerns by students about the fact that the S.W.A.G. summit was a mandatory event, and therefore RSO leaders had to go to the summit in order to secure Student Senate funding.
“I thought it was a bit unnecessary to require us to take four hours out of our Saturday or receive no funding,” said sophomore Lauren Estes.
With an involved campus body and intensive academics, four hours is a bit intimidating for students to commit to. If the all of the programming was necessary, it might have made sense to hold two shorter sessions across the weekend.
After the breakout sessions and lunch, Student Senate gave a very helpful and informational tutorial on applications for funding of RSO events.
“The information I received about funding from Student Senate that was displayed in the last 30 minutes of the session was probably the most helpful, as I have never applied for funding before,” said Randazzo.
As leaderships passes in different ways in different RSOs, and with the new formation of RSOs, having a way of ensuring that the leaders of the organizations are knowledgeable in how to apply for necessary funds is critical.
Having a mandatory meeting in which this information is provided is not unreasonable, in fact, it is actually a good idea. But enveloping this meeting in the four hours of the S.W.A.G. summit is perhaps unnecessarily inconvenient for student leaders.
The concept behind the S.W.A.G. summit is praise-worthy, but re-organization for the program next year could improve its reception.