Student Government Town Hall event to offer answers for students

Students questioning the role of Student Government (SG) will soon get their concerns addressed by some of SG’s main leaders.

For the past month, students have been submitting questions for the SG Town Hall event planned for Wednesday. The panel will include current student body president Andy Rodriguez, SG Supreme Court Justice Milton Llinas, Senate President Pro Tempore Danish Hassan and president-elect Chris Griffin. 

“We’re trying to make it a larger-scale event where a student can come out and get their question answered,” Director of Student Outreach and Access Danielle Sanchez said. “We had a BullSync survey out … for students to fill out any questions or concerns they had about (SG).”

Sanchez worked with Assistant Director Joanne Rodriguez to organize the event, which was inspired by similar events held by the University of North Florida (UNF). The duo communicated with the organizers at UNF to get ideas about how the event should function and adjusted it for USF.

The event starts at 5 p.m. in the Marshall Student Center Amphitheater with Rodriguez’s State of the Student Body Address and a panel Q&A to follow.
Most of the questions come from the survey SG took at the Bull Market and online, but the panel will take questions from the audience during the last 15 minutes.

“We’re going to search on Twitter. People can submit questions they have on the spot using the #SGTownHall2016, and we’ll be pulling questions from there as well to ask the panel on site,” Sanchez said.

If a student doesn’t get his question answered during the panel, there will be a networking event afterward until 8 p.m. where the panelists will answer questions on a more individual basis.

Sanchez hopes the event will bring students and SG closer together by encouraging transparency and open communication. She also said the event will give students the chance to understand what SG is doing and ask Griffin about what SG plans for the next term.

“I’m hoping that we offer students a little bit more transparency, that we offer students answers to any questions they might have about (SG), what (SG) will look like in future — since we’ll have Chris on the panel, he can answer any questions about that along with some of his platform goals for the upcoming year — and really just to be more interactive with (SG),” she said.