Ithaca College students elected IC All That to be the executive board of the Student Government Association for the 2014–15 academic year. IC All That will take office May 19, the day after graduation.
In addition, 11 senate positions were filled during the April 17–18 election, of which only two were contested: Class of 2017 senator and international student senator. Thirteen senator seats still remain open for elections in Fall 2014.
According to sophomore Dominick Recckio, current vice president of communications for the SGA, 1,223 students voted in this year’s spring elections, which is 18.2 percent of the student population. This is an increase from 16.7 percent in 2012 and 16.3 percent in 2011.
Cedrick-Michael Simmons, the current SGA president, said the SGA will not release the breakdown of the election results, because there is no function or benefit in doing so.
The winning executive board, IC All That, is composed of five members: junior Crystal Kayiza, SGA president; freshman Kaitlin Logsdon, vice president of academic affairs; junior Aaron Lipford, vice president of campus affairs; sophomore Kyle James, vice president of communications; and sophomore Sandra Rojas for vice president of business and finance.
This year in the SGA, Kayiza served as the Roy H. Park School of Communications senator, James served as senator-at-large and Logsdon has held the Class of 2017 senator seat since February.
Rojas has served on the SGA appropriations committee for the past two years. Lipford, who has not served in the SGA previously, has held leadership positions with IC Created Equal, the African Latino Society, the Residence Hall Association and the Bureau of Concerts.
Kayiza said it is important for IC All That to serve the students, first and foremost.
“I feel like in the past, there’s this idea that because you’re a representative you preside over something,” she said. “We’re here to serve the needs of students. At the end of the day, if it’s not beneficial for students at large, it’s not going to happen in our administration.”
James said he hopes to increase student participation in the SGA for the coming year.
“I want more students to A, show more interest [and] know what SGA is, and B, come to the meetings,” James said.
IC All That hopes to accomplish this by bringing the SGA to the students, rather than encouraging students to go to their senators, Kayiza said. She said the board hopes to send senators to student organization meetings so they can develop a better idea of existing student concerns.
James said he thinks requiring senators to collect constituent signatures on their bills would boost student participation.
“We wanted to get 25 signatures for each bill a senator proposes,” James said. “It will get the student body more interested and more knowledgeable about what we’re doing.”
Kayiza said by the end of the next academic year, she hopes IC All That will leave behind a legacy in which students feel comfortable with approaching the SGA.
“The goal of any executive board should be to help … the campus grow in terms of making sure the student experience is as best as it could be,” Kayiza said. “I definitely think that at the end of the day, with all of our initiatives, that would be the goal.”
