By Jonathan Smith, Managing Editor

Although the final budget is yet to be determined, Students’ Association executive president Jonathan Wilkerson and executive vice president Layne Rouse already have plans for SA this semester.

Rouse said there are at least two projects that will be undertaken in the first couple of weeks of the semester.

SA has organized an event it is calling Invision for current and future student leaders. Invision will be a dinner and a chance for different student leaders to meet each other.

“We’re going to focus on networking current leaders to future leaders, achieving a state of mind in the current leaders to think transition, to think forward,” Rouse said. “I think there’s a tendency within us as student leaders to get so caught up with everything that’s going on that we sometimes forget the generation after us.”

Learning Diversity

Rouse said he will also be working with a recently organized multicultural coucil to begin looking for ways to increase cultural awareness on campus.

“We’ve been meeting with the purpose of finding ways to increase minority contact with social clubs,” Rouse said.

He said they noticed that not many minorities are involved in social clubs, and the council-which is made of members from the International Students Association, Essence of Ebony, Hispanos Unidos, GATA, Tri Kappa Gamma, Pi Kappa and Frater Sodalis-will try to find ways to increase that.

After one semester in their current executive officer roles, Wilkerson and Rouse both said they have certain aspects of SA that they would like to see continue to improve.

Wilkerson said he’d like to see “a better understanding of all the members, whether it be a budget or a project we want to do or a student concern that has been brought to our attention.”

Rouse said he would like Congress members to better understand the needs of groups on campus.

“If we can get into the student groups’ lives to the point that we can understand what their needs are, then we can begin to address those needs where they are,” Rouse said. “To do that, you have to begin by knowing the student groups.”

Campus Improvements

Wilkerson said continuing to get campus improvements for students, such as more bike racks on campus, will continue to be one of SA’s goals. One of the biggest improvements he mentioned was beginning the construction for a jogging track around campus, something he said he would like to see begun while he is here in his final semester.

“It’s been something that’s been talked about since before I got here,” Wilkerson said. “I would like for my senior year, last semester for plans to be finalized for that first part.”

Wilkerson also said, in light of the traffic accident on Campus Court that critically injured a student in November, he would like SA to continue looking at the traffic, lighting and crosswalk situation around the roads on campus.

Servant Leadership

Although Wilkerson and Rouse said many project goals for the semester cannot be set until the SA retreat when the budget is finalized, Rouse said some of his goals for the semester have less to do with projects and more to do with a mindset for SA members.

“I’d really like to see Congress as people really catch on to the idea of what they have signed up to be-to capture the idea of representing, to capture the idea of being a leader of leaders, to capture the essence of being a servant of servants.”