DeKALB — NIU’s Student Government Association (SGA) plans to cut bureaucracy and increase connections with students this year.
For Speaker of the Senate Nathan Gonzalez, communication is the highest priority improvement for SGA this year.
“SGA doesn’t really have a direct connection to the student organizations themselves, especially when it comes to exchanging financial policies,” Gonzalez said. “The key thing I want to update for SGA is that communication aspect.”
Gonzalez said face-to-face interactions between senators and leadership staff at SGA is also important for normalizing relations and increasing transparency.
“I work with our executive team on a constant basis,” he said. “The senators sometimes don’t and in order to make sure that they’re effective at their jobs, spreading the word or gathering information, they need to be connected with the executive branch.”
Gonzalez plans to reduce the bureaucracy within SGA by utilizing Huskie Hub.
“SGA exists on campus to serve as a voice for students,” Gonzalez said. “Even if we can’t directly control or do anything, we can get you in contact with the right people.”
SGA operates within the university’s system of governance, made up of students who represent the interests of the NIU student body. Huskie Hub was launched in 2022 by SGA as a centralized system to better organize and coordinate SGA planned events.
Student clubs and organizations advertise events on Huskie Hub through a feature called groups. Students and staff can join these groups and register for events through them.
Gonzalez explained how the introduction of Huskie Hub serves as an opportunity to revise any inefficiencies in communication.
“A good chunk of our policies trace back to before we had Huskie Hub as a system. Now that we do have Huskie Hub as a system, which has still been here for quite a while now, there’s still some things that we can still switch up in our language,” Gonzalez said.
He stressed the importance of students communicating their problems to SGA.
“We can’t do it unless we hear student voices,” Gonzalez said.
The SGA office is located on the ground floor of the Holmes Student Center, in the Oasis Suite.
The first SGA meeting of the semester is on Friday, Sept 5.
