“Be the change you wish to see on Campus” is an opportunity that Chatham Student Government (CSG) grants to every student on campus.
CSG is the student elected Senate which consists of officers from each of the four classes, in addition to the executive board.
“[CSG] is a platform where we can be liaisons to the administration but where we can also advocate for issues that we really care about” is how Jeannette Schollaert describes CSG. Schollaert is a junior majoring in English & Women Studies at Chatham and serves as the Executive Vice President of CSG. According to Schollaert, CSG meetings as a whole are open to every single person on campus. Any student who has any concern may attend those meetings and express his/her concerns to the Senate members so they can work towards “making Chatham a better place to be.”
Mareija Bibbs, senior in Human Biology and the executive president of CSG said, “We’re always open to hear feedback, because we want everyone to enjoy their experience here at Chatham, so whenever there’s an issue, it’s our top priority.”
CSG Senate meetings are held every Thursday to discuss Senate issues.
CSG is a giant umbrella that is bisected by different branches. One of those branches is the Student Organization Forum (SOF), which is part of what Schollaert runs in her position. SOF consists of student organization leaders who gather for monthly Tuesday meetings. SOF meets to share concerns and operates under a basic set of policies and procedures, in order for student leaders to be more effective in their work.
SOF also provides guidance to the student organizations through the event planning process if needed in order to make events more profitable and efficient. They can be helped, for example, with a room request, a speaking invitation and other basic steps in order to eventually produce a successful event. Every organization is required to send one representative to those meetings, in order to remain eligible for the UBC funding.
Schollaert runs both the SOF meetings and the CSG Senate meetings as Parliamentarian.
A large number of the events held on campus are partially or fully funded by the Undergraduate Budget Committee (UBC), which is run by Claire Swauger, a senior majoring in Environmental Science at Chatham and the CSG Vice President of Finances. UBC is another branch of CSG.
According to Swauger, UBC was given a budget of $30,000 this year, which UBC is responsible for dispensing properly. “Student organizations come to us, present an event with a special funds request, and according to the UBC constitution or methods of order, we decide how to allocate those funds” added Swauger.
UBC meetings are held every other Tuesday and requests should be handed in four weeks in advance.
“We always try to be fair, and follow the guidelines for how we distribute funds. Things that happen on Chatham are given first priority, and if they collaborate with a lot of organizations, that gets priority as well.”
The CSG Constitution and UBC Methods of Order can be accessed on myChatham under Documents and Forms, Student Affairs.
CSG has been working on “Town Hall Information Sessions,” which is kind of a press conference release that is held every Thursday in January. In those sessions, each administration person from each category comes and discusses the students’ concerns with them.
All the information about the CSG meetings is open to the public, whether in hard copies or online. CSG announcements can also be reached at CSGSTUGOVT on Twitter, or on the Facebook page: Chatham Student Government, which is updated every Thursday to broadcast the meetings.
“We are all students here, and we want to get the most out of our four years in the happiest way possible, so if you have a concern, we probably have it too!” Schollaert said.