SGA promotes events to foster student connection for those who feel detached from campus life

by PRIYA PATEL

Senior Writer

The Student Government Association (SGA) is making efforts this semester to increase participation at campus-wide events. These student leaders have noticed that as COVID-19 persists, the campus community has become increasingly deflated, and it is hoped that more involvement at events will help lift the mood.

“One of our biggest goals for this semester is to get students excited for school by figuring out ways to increase participation at campus events,” said SGA secretary Sophia Hobbs, a senior history major. “We want to help make the general atmosphere of campus more positive since so many of our peers are feeling stressed and anxious. We’re thinking about calling this ‘Revive the Vibe’ since campus engagement levels have been so low since COVID.”

There are many reasons that students could be experiencing these low energy levels.

“What students need when they come to college is to find their sense of community and the people that they feel they can be comfortable with,” said Miriam Liss, a professor in the psychology department of UMW. “Last year especially the opportunities for socialization and building community were limited. Current sophomores didn’t get to build connections or engage in campus traditions in a typical way. Juniors had only one semester of normalcy and then their normal college experience was completely transformed for the majority of their time here. Current seniors missed the traditions of the end of their sophomore year and their entire junior year. This has been a huge trauma—for the entire country really but everyone is feeling it.”

SGA feels as though hosting events could make students feel better.

“Students are not feeling like there is any engagement or care for them from the administration to the professors,” said Shadwick Yoder, the class of 2025 vice president and SGA university relations chair. “Many see this semester as the beginning of no more compassion due to their teachers showing no understanding for the different situations due to COVID.”

The SGA officers are concerned that a lack of funding for university-sponsored events will make UMW less desirable to current and prospective students.

“The major budget cut that student engagement has received this year assists in the inability to fund the very traditions that make UMW feel like a true home,” said SGA President Brianna “Breezy” Reaves, a senior sociology major. “Though UMW experienced a hard hit financially because of COVID-19, as student leaders we know that academics are not the only reason that we are on campus, and therefore we should be able to experience club events, UMW traditions, and extracurriculars without a limited budget that causes us to scale back or cancel the very events that we love.”

Reaves also worries that decreased funding will impact groups on campus that contribute to the university’s diversity.

“When such celebratory and informative events can no longer take place, the very communities that assist in making UMW racially diverse are more prone to transfer to an institution that adds to their unique and necessary student experience,” Reaves said.

SGA also wants to use this semester to better address student concerns, including those voiced at the Student Union in the fall. They plan to survey students on campus issues and to have more than just monthly meetings with the administration.