Syracuse University’s Student Association is more academically diverse than in past years, former SA leaders said.

In the past, few students in majors outside the College of Arts and Sciences, particularly STEM-related fields, ran for general assembly seats, SA leaders said. Of the 21 new assembly members elected to SA’s assembly last week, 12 were from schools and colleges outside Arts and Sciences.

Two new members from the School of Architecture and three new members each from the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the College of Visual and Performing Arts were elected to the organization — a process which lasted until after 1 a.m. Tuesday. Election nights usually last from three to five hours, former SA President James Franco said.

Twenty-three candidates ran for assembly seats in this year’s elections.

“We have so much more representation in every sense of the word,” said Kyle Rosenblum, SA’s vice president. “We have reached out not only to students of different identities, backgrounds and experiences but also of all the colleges.”

While SA creates policies that affect the overall student body, former and current SA leaders said the body has historically had trouble addressing the concerns of students campus-wide because of the lack of architecture, STEM and VPA members.

“You can’t even begin to approach a problem if you don’t know what the problem is,” Franco said.

Of the 31 members in SA’s 2017-18 assembly, 17 assembly members were from Arts and Sciences, according to SA’s website. More than one-third of all SU students are enrolled in the college.

There was just one representative from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, while three members were from VPA. No representatives were enrolled in the School of Architecture during the 2017-18 academic year.

Rosenblum said there are two main benefits for increased academic diversity: more small changes throughout the year and a wider range of students on different academic committees.

“When we’re choosing our academic affairs committee, we unfortunately largely focus on Arts and Sciences core because we have such a large population of Arts and Sciences students,” said Sophia Faram, chair of SA’s board of elections committee.

SA President Ghufran Salih said academic diversity will help the organization cover issues that SA misses.

“We’ve always had this, but we’ll take on more of a listening role on what these schools and colleges need and be more understanding and cognizant of (the fact) that we’re not in those specific schools and colleges,” she said.

SA revised parts of its recruitment strategy in the lead up to last week’s elections, Salih said.

SA members started reaching out to different campus organizations that they were involved in, Salih said. She said she had personally reached out to the Muslim Student Association.

Salih publicly posted her office hours and had multiple students come up to her around campus to talk about their concerns. And she said multiple people approached her on the University Place promenade to ask her questions about SA. Three of those people are now a part of the organization.

“A lot of outreach, a lot of talking to people and a lot of making sure that Kyle and myself and all of our assembly members and cabinet members are accessible to students is very, very important,” Salih said.

Published on September 23, 2018 at 8:49 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326