Juniors David Sommers and Jackie Jastrzebski were elected Student Government’s President/Vice President for the 2015-16 school year on Thursday.
Sommers currently serves as SGA’s secretary, while Jastrzebski is a representative for the junior class. In a vote of 503-233, Sommers and Jastrzebski won over juniors Peter Siepiora and Danica Gray.
Upon the approval of the Senate, Jastrzebski said they are appointing sophomores Charles Bentley and Kevin Seelander as SGA’s secretary and treasurer.
Sommers expressed his joy for winning with a goal of keeping up the success of the Richie Benson/Megan Funke administration.
“I’m very glad the students have chosen me to lead them and to be their voice for Vikings,” said Sommers.
Sommers said his goals for next year are transparency at all levels, including transparency concerning tuition, and accountability relating to sexual assault awareness.
Sommers said he wants “everybody to understand the ramifications of what happens if a sexual assault occurs at Augustana, and to hold everybody to a higher standard, meaning sexual assault should not happen on campus at all, in any form.”
Jastrzebski said she and Sommers are excited to see the results of the campus survey about sexual assault sent out by the administration.
Concerning SGA’s budget, Sommers said that he plans on reaching out to student groups to make sure that the groups have a plan in terms of fundraising and filing contingencies.
“If a student group wants to achieve something, they need to properly plan for it,” said Sommers. “They need to understand that (they) can’t just ask SGA for a blank check.”
Sommers said student groups are welcome to use SGA as a resource for their fundraising plans.
This year, SGA has the most contingency requests ever after a $7,000 budget cut, which is why this year the budget is lower than it has been in previous years, Sommers said.
“I think that Richie and Megan have done a phenomenal job of handling the budget situation,” said Sommers. “We still have money in the budget for groups to file contingencies.”
Sommers plans to meet with the leaders of student groups and the administration to asses the needs of the campus. Jastrzebski said SGA plans on pushing the senate student group liaisons, which every campus organization has, harder serve as a resource for the campus.
“As of now, the only concern that David and I have is that we only have a little over a year,” said Jastrzebski. “There’s so many things that David and I are passionate about that we are going to try to get done in a short amount of time.”