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Throughout high school, Dante Reese was involved in a number of advocacy initiatives. He was vice president of his school’s Black Student Union and appeared at the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Blue Diamond Gala where he spoke about community activism. Now a freshman at Syracuse University, Reese is looking to keep his passion going.

“I just want to continue to represent, advocate, and help other students as I’ve been doing for the last years of my life,” said Dante Reese, who was elected to represent the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics in the Student Association assembly.

SA announced their Fall 2022 assembly election results in a campus-wide email Saturday afternoon, with a total of 676 students voting to elect 19 candidates to both at-large and assembly positions. Elected candidates said they ran for their respective positions to establish a stronger community on SU’s campus.

Gita Goldberg, a junior who transferred into SU this semester from Marion Military Institute, ran for and won a seat as an at-large representative within the assembly. As an at-large member, Goldberg represents the entire SU undergraduate student body.

Drawing from her experience as a transfer student, she believes her position will give her a better opportunity to reach and represent a diverse group of students, which she enjoyed doing at her former college.

“That was something I was big on, creating an environment (where) people felt like they could address their problems, and that weren’t just going to be thrown under the table and weren’t addressed, that we actually wanted them to be heard.”

Goldberg also is an active member of the military and wants to represent the group throughout the university. The student body also elected sophomores Jacqueline DiPaolo and Eleanor Unsworth to at-large positions within SA.

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Some student representatives have specific issues they would like to improve on while in their positions. First-Year Representative Julia Moreno is interested in finding a way to make the Barnes Center at the Arch a more welcoming environment for women. She said the building can be crowded and that women deserve their own space to workout.

Moreno, Matthew Byrne, German Nolivos, Myia Dargan and Seray Ozgenc, were elected as first-year representatives.

Both DiPaolo and First-Year Representative Shawn Sutherland expressed interest in further contributing to mental health initiatives. Sutherland said he enjoyed activities from SA’s recent Mental Health Week, like the assembly’s tabling, and he hopes to plan similar events in the future.

Tim Phelps, a first-year construction management major at SUNY ESF, is the sole representative for the college within SA. In his new position, he wants to implement some of ESF’s sustainability efforts at SU including improved differentiation between waste and recycling in dining halls.
Phelps also hopes to improve “disjointed” communication between SA and ESF’s student government, the Mighty Oak Student Assembly, as well as communication between the two schools in general. He said most people aren’t aware SA even has a seat for ESF.

“We’re in kind of a weird spot where we basically have two different governing bodies over us,” Phelps said. “It’s definitely important that those two do work in sync.”

In her role representing the overall SU student body, DiPaolo said she wants to motivate students to be more vocal about on-campus concerns they may have.

“There’s a lot of issues on campus that students sometimes will make comments about and they’re like, ‘I wish this was different’, and honestly, I feel like it’s more easy and more accessible than a lot of people think,” she said.

For First-Year Representatives Spencer Chan and Sutherland, joining SA provided an immediate opportunity to get involved at SU while they are still new to the campus.

“Being a first year, you’re always trying to find new friends and groups,” Chan said. “(I thought), that is one way I could really implement myself into the community, just really doing head-on things.”

Published on October 10, 2022 at 12:38 am