Student Association plans to reform SEM 100, expand student employment
Hannah Ly / Staff Photographer
The organization will also address low turnout in SA elections.
Syracuse University’s Student Association plans to reform SEM 100 and implement trigger warnings in classes this semester.
SA President Mackenzie Mertikas and Vice President Sameeha Saied said they’ve planned several initiatives for the spring semester. Mertikas and Saied also aim to expand student employment opportunities and plan heritage months with SU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs.
SA will help revise first-year diversity course SEM 100 for fall 2021, Saied said
“Anyone that’s gone through the course before knows that it’s not necessarily effective and it doesn’t hit all the topics that it needs to,” said Saied, who serves on the University Senate ad hoc committee overseeing the course’s revision.
SEM 100 reform was one of the student demands Chancellor Kent Syverud signed in November. Syverud accepted demands and concerns from international, Jewish and indigenous students, as well as from the black student-led movement #NotAgainSU.
Mertikas and Saied discussed providing trigger warnings in classes with administration last semester. They hope to get the initiative on the university’s agenda this year, they said.
“You can be in an economics class and not be expecting a topic like sexual assault to come up,” Mertikas said. “That’s not a safe space for those students who may be affected by that.”
SA has a two-part plan for implementing trigger warnings, Mertikas said. All faculty and staff would first take part in training addressing the need for trigger warnings. Trigger warnings would then be announced before class, whether through a course syllabus or in an email sent prior to meeting, she said.
SA is also collaborating with the Office of Multicultural Affairs to plan Black History Month, Saied said. SA will focus on promoting events throughout the month, she said.
A Celebratory Month Committee formed this year to coordinate events and facilitate communication between student organizations on campus, Mertikas said.
“There are representatives from groups all over campus to make sure we’re working together and not planning events on top of each other,” she said.
Mertikas and Saied have also prioritized improvements to Handshake, the university’s online career management tool for students. Handshake replaced SU Job Opps, an earlier student employment site. Handshake did not resolve all the problems of SU Job Opps, Mertikas said.
Many students had trouble finding jobs or would never hear back after sending an application, Mertikas said. There were also many outdated job offerings on the site, she said. The two first discussed troubleshooting Handshake with SU administration last year.
SA is also hoping to increase voter turnout for the SA elections in April and the 2020 presidential and primary elections, Mertikas said. SA will plan voter registration drives and distribute information about the candidates to engage more students, they said.
“We are really focused on making sure this organization is in good shape for next year,” Saied said. “We came into these leadership positions with a lot of our assembly members gone. The whole organization was sort of in disarray and we had to spend a lot of last semester getting back on track.”
Published on January 26, 2020 at 8:47 pm
