Mackenzie Mertikas and Sameeha Saied have used the summer months to get a head start on planning initiatives for the upcoming year as president and vice president of Syracuse University’s Student Association.  

Mertikas and Saied have enjoyed a jump start that no other SA leaders have gotten. A recent change in SA’s bylaws allowed Mertikas and Saied to act in their full capacity as president and vice president starting at the end of the spring semester. Previous administrations could not be sworn in until August. 

The pair have been able to introduce themselves as SA’s leaders to people they work with and start organizing initiatives for the beginning of the fall semester – namely Mental Health Awareness Week, improving SA’s internal culture and working with the first-year experience.

“We’ve had such good communication over the summer,” Mertikas said. “We’ve been really talking to each other about how we want the year to work.”

Elected in April, Mertikas and Saied ran a campaign based on five principles: diversity and inclusion, financial accessibility, accountability and transparency, health and wellness and community engagement. They will hold SA’s first meeting of the semester on Monday. 

Much of their summer work has focused on continuing projects that were previously established by past SA administrations, Mertikas said. The initiatives include partnering with ride-hailing company Lyft, working with SU’s athletics department to provide free tickets to sporting games and facilitating STI screenings through the Office of Health Promotion.  

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Once the semester starts and the two meet with their cabinet members, they will start to focus on the big ideas that come up in those meetings, Mertikas said. 

“We want to be giving the committees and assembly a lot of freedom to do other things,” Saied said. “Our attention is going to shift a little bit once the year starts just because we’re going to have so many more ideas flowing and so much more going on.”

The two will also look to their cabinet and committees when working on ideas and initiatives from their campaign – something that they would have easier access to once the school year starts. 

But in the months leading up to the first meeting, the two have capitalized on past initiatives. 

Over the summer, Mertikas and Sameeha began organizing Mental Health Awareness Week–an event to bring awareness to different aspects of mental health. They worked to set up a schedule for the week so that they could request funding when they return to SU, Mertikas said.

The event is held in October, relatively early in the semester, which is part of the reason why they decided to start planning it in the summer, Mertikas said. Because of their summer work, they won’t have to focus last-minute on the week, she said. 

“We’re really going to work on emphasizing all of the different parts of mental health,” Mertikas added. 

The two also want to improve SA’s internal culture and ensure the organization is a safe and respectful space, Saied said. Mertikas said they want everyone in SA to be on the same page, knowing what is expected of them. This comes after SA investigated several campaigns for alleged infractions during the last election cycle.

“We want to make sure that we’re being as productive as we can with the time that we have and with the influence that we have as an organization,” Saied said.

Saied spent the summer working on SU’s first-year experience both as SA vice president and through her internship with the Office of First Year and Transfer Programs. She attended a June conference on successful first-year seminars and sat in on weekly meetings on campus as a student voice for SU’s first-year experience over the summer.

While Saied was in Syracuse for the summer, Mertikas was in New Jersey. Being in different space was the hardest part of the summer for them, Mertikas said, but they developed a system that allowed them to find time to talk about and work on SA. Often that time was during Mertikas’ two-hour commute from work to home, and she would call Saied while on the train. 

“It’s good that we have time to just sit down and (talk about) everything that comes to mind,” Mertikas said.

Published on August 25, 2019 at 9:58 pm

Contact India: irmiragl@syr.edu