Many students don’t know, but they are already paying dues to be part of the Student Government Association at Del Mar College.
Tayler Franco, a liberal arts major, was surprised to hear part of her $15 student service fee goes to support the SGA.
“This is brand new information to me,” Franco said. “It’s nice to know that I’m part of a club already though.”
The SGA is all-inclusive and all students are already part of the organization. Besides bringing speakers to campus, the group also makes sure the voices of students are heard.
Natasha Perez, president of the SGA, said she hopes to see more students making it to meetings this semester.
“We talk about more things that are behind-the-scenes such as things that are going to be changing on campus,” Perez said. “As officers, we meet with a lot of the higher administration. We talk about things they are thinking of implementing on our campus and need the opinions of students.”
Perez said the more people they get in their meetings, the more opinions they will have, and the more students will be represented at Del Mar.
The SGA attends a yearly state convention, the Texas Junior College Student Government Association, where they get their group recognized while also trying to get DMC recognized.
The main priorities Perez hopes to focus on are for students to contribute submissions to the convention and for more students coming to meetings.
“Last year we had submissions for video and song of the year, and we got third place for both,” Perez said. “I would like to see more people come together at our meetings so we can hear from them and know how we can be more of a presence to them.”
This semester, Perez said she plans on having events be brought to the students.
“We know at a community college people come to class and then leave,” Perez said. “It’s hard to get them to go to the Retama Room, so a lot of the events we are going to have will be in the Harvin Center Cafeteria Common Area. That way students will be more engaged and won’t have to leave where they are at because a lot of people congregate here and then they can participate.”
Besides making DMC more aware of recycling, Perez said the thing she is most proud of is seeing new students come to meetings.
“It makes my heart very happy when they walk out, come up to me and say, ‘Wow, I never knew this is what we were going to learn here in these meetings,’” Perez said. “Being able to help students understand Del Mar College and the experience they can get out of it; I think the SGA does a really good job with that.”
The first meeting will be held on Jan. 22 at West Campus in the Coleman Center Student Hub at 12:30 p.m.
