Alexsis Elliott
From left, junior Senate Chair Nikki Sutera and junior Rishabh Sen, president of the student body, had conversations with students who did not know what SGC was before attending.
The Ithaca College Student Governance Council hosted an open house April 14 instead of a regular meeting session. SGC recorded that 75 students came to learn about the council, share concerns, participate in a raffle and eat from an Indian buffet.
During the executive board’s opening remarks, junior Rishabh Sen, president of the student body, highlighted recent SGC initiatives to show attendees what the council has accomplished. Among these initiatives were the 2021 bill to improve lighting on campus and the 2022 bill to require all academic buildings to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom.
Senior Kathi Hodel, vice president of business and finance, announced that the interest form to run for SGC for the 2025-26 academic year has opened. She said information sessions will be held for interested students April 18 and 21, followed by platform presentations April 24, voting April 28-29 and final results April 30. The first meeting with the new senate will be held May 5. All SGC meetings are open to the student body.
Junior Caleb Cackowski, vice president of communications, told attendees about the importance of SGC as a representative body for students. He said that while it is valuable to run for a seat on the council, students can also get involved by voicing their concerns and ideas to existing members.
“If you take away nothing else, SGC is here as a service for you,” Cackowski said.
Students then made their way around seven stations — residential affairs, student affairs and campus life, academic affairs, appropriations, social justice and sustainability, elections and “ask us anything” — where they spoke to senators about their work in SGC.
Senior Andres Hernandez said he barely knew anything about the council before attending.
“I wanted to see what SGC was doing for students on campus and if they could give me any kind of clue as to how it’s going to look after I graduate,” Hernandez said.
Other students came to the open house with specific concerns about campus. First-year student Rob Wintsch said he spoke to senators about implementing a gender-neutral bathroom policy for non-academic buildings, noting that Muller Chapel does not have one. He also said he is passionate about environmental sustainability. At the open house, Wintsch advocated for limiting the amount of time residential building lights stay on at night and then found out that SGC is working on an initiative to dim the lights at night.
“I didn’t know that [SGC] did all this stuff,” Wintsch said. “I have brought up a couple issues and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re working on that.’”
First-year Sam Knight said he came to the open house to express concerns about the implementation of artificial intelligence on campus. He criticized the college’s AI mini-grants, stipends given to professors during the 2024-25 academic year to integrate AI into their curriculum to promote AI literacy. Knight said the mini-grants divert resources away from skilled professors in the Department of Computer Science who work with large language models, the machine-learning model used by AI softwares like ChatGPT.
“We have people here who are doing this research, and it’s going to random professors in other fields so they can incorporate AI,” Knight said.
SGC members said they were happy with the outcome of the open house. Junior Senate Chair Nikki Sutera said she had meaningful conversations with students who did not know what SGC was before attending but left knowing their senators. She said several students asked how they can get involved in SGC.
“It is so exciting to see students take the initiative to be leaders on campus, and I am happy that so many people learned that SGC is a place where that can happen,” Sutera said via email. “I am really happy with this event and hope to do it again next year!”
The SGC is the sole representative body for the Ithaca College student community. The SGC meets from 7-9 p.m. every Monday in the Taughannock Falls room of the Campus Center. The SGC can be contacted at [email protected].