DeKALB – The Student Government Association confirmed two new directors at its first Senate meeting of the semester on Sunday. 

Naava Ofri-Akman, junior acting major and dance minor, was unanimously approved to be the Director of Environmental Affairs, which will include responsibilities that focus on the environment with more community service and getting people to be more involved, Ofri-Akman said.

Ofri-Akman listed several different eco-friendly goals she has during her time in this role, including some that were not successful last year when she served as Director of Environmental Affairs. 

Her first priority will be to host a clothing swap to encourage sustainable clothing and stop people from throwing away clothes, Ofri-Akman said. 

Ofri-Akman wants to encourage more students to carpool to the store through a driver share signup. 

“I want to do a student driver share where students who do have cars can take freshmen and sophomores to the grocery store, even people in the community who just don’t have cars to grocery stores or department stores,” Ofri-Akman said. “You can sign up for a share where, ‘Hey, I’m going to the grocery store Friday at five, you can come with me, and I’ll pick you up and I’ll drop you off.’”

Ofri-Akman’s other goals include river cleanups, bringing compost systems to dining halls to reduce waste, increasing volunteering at the community gardens and she wants each department to have a job around campus such as painting a mural, or the math department helping people with their taxes. 

“I want to do the easiest ones (goals) first because I can have them happen earlier,” Ofri-Akman said. “Then I can plan the more difficult ones across like a long year, so instead of all of them being really heavy at the end of the year, there’s steady events and things happening. So the ones that I wasn’t able to do last year, I would probably want to do in the middle, towards the end of the year when I have more time to prepare for them.” 

Jacob Burg, junior political science and NGO studies major, was unanimously approved to be the Deputy Speaker of the Senate. 

Burg said the Deputy Speaker position will allow him to be more involved with the Student Government Association. 

“If I were to be elected to this position, something I’d be really focused on is making sure all senators hold the responsibilities that they just weren’t able to, and that they’re going to be super engaged,” Burg said. 

One way he would get the senators to be more engaged with the organization is by having regular one-on-one meetings with each of them to see what their goals are and to push them, Burg said. 

“Another thing that I did want to do is Speaker (Dallas) Douglass last year passed a couple of accountability things for elected officials, and I would like to expand on that to make sure that senators have the opportunity to vote on the basis of the constituency,” ​Burg said.