USG hopes to connect more with students, faculty

By: Antho­ny Zepperi 
Sep­tem­ber 27, 2019
The Dai­ly Campus 

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Connecticut’s Under­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Government’s (USG) goals for the semes­ter include con­nect­ing more with stu­dents and fac­ul­ty and pro­mot­ing diversity. 

USG Vice Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Chinyum­ba, a sev­enth-semes­ter polit­i­cal sci­ence major minor­ing in real estate, said he hopes USG’s gov­ern­ing board cre­ates diver­si­ty on cam­pus and hopes it is more suc­cess­ful than last year. 

“We are very diverse this semes­ter and have a stu­dent body with dif­fer­ent walks of life,” Chinyum­ba said. “We want to improve from last year. We want to excel and be better.” 

USG Pres­i­dent Priyan­ka Thakkar, a sev­enth-semes­ter man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tems major, said she hopes the gov­ern­ment cre­ates unique expe­ri­ences for stu­dents on campus. 

“We want to reach out to as many peo­ple as we can and make sure every­one on cam­pus has a unique expe­ri­ence,” Thakkar said. 

Chinyum­ba said USG is try­ing to have week­ly, small­er events on cam­pus, includ­ing one that will take place this week. 

“We have a wel­come back event with food, games and hope that events like these are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble for stu­dents to attend,” Chinyum­ba said. 

Chinyum­ba also said the board hopes to increase con­nec­tions with uni­ver­si­ty faculty. 

“This semes­ter, we hope to con­nect more with stu­dent admin­is­tra­tors and be much more engag­ing with them,” Chinyum­ba said. 

Thakkar said the gov­ern­ing board is try­ing to do every­thing in its pow­er to help organizations. 

“We want to pro­vide for var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions, like the stu­dent affairs com­mit­tee,” Thakkar said. 

This semes­ter, the gov­ern­ing board con­sists of 15 mem­bers: Thakkar, Chinyum­ba, the comp­trol­ler, mem­bers of USG’s exec­u­tive cab­i­net and chairs of the USG com­mit­tees. The sen­ate will have 80 sen­a­tors and the chief of staff. 

“We want to focus on inter­nal mat­ters, such as build­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty, as well as cohe­sive rela­tion­ships,” Chinyum­ba said. “We hope to grow with the stu­dents on campus.” 

Thakkar said she hopes to improve the gov­ern­ment, build a path­way for stu­dents, make cohe­sive and effi­cient activ­i­ties and be open with the university. 

“I hope to build a real­ly strong orga­ni­za­tion that best rep­re­sents the stu­dent body, cre­ate the best pas­sage between stu­dents and admin­is­tra­tors, cre­ate and exe­cute effi­cient pro­grams and ini­tia­tives with stu­dents’ con­cerns being met and be trans­par­ent with stu­dents,” Thakkar said. 

Chinyum­ba said the USG gov­ern­ing board hopes to make stu­dents the prime concern. 

“We hope to put stu­dents’ con­cerns first and be an advo­cate for all walks of life,” Chinyum­ba said.