Two new committee chair members were sworn in and one additional senator was selected during the Student Government Association meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 20.

Emily Houston will be the student affairs chair, and Alex Sergent will be the public relations chair. This means SGA’s committee chair appointments are now complete. Lucas Knight was selected to be a senator after a miscommunication last semester left the senate one representative short.

“Last spring, they were supposed to elect 11 at-large seats,” Speaker Nathan Cherry said. “They elected 10, thus we were one seat short throughout this whole summer and this year, and I failed to catch that.”

Kate Hart, Hannah Neeper and James Line were also approved to be appointed to the University Senate.

After the newly-elected student senators were sworn in, SGA President Jay Todd Richey gave his report. Richey introduced the “Home Away From Home” event which will take place Thursday, Sept. 29 at the Honors College and International Center and is designed to encourage interaction between international and American students.

Richey also presented a video featuring the Renaissance Scholars Program with the intent of creating a similar project on campus. This program would aim to provide students with a family or guardian on campus when they may not otherwise have one.

Finally, Richey addressed the possibility of a closed search for WKU’s next president. Richey said he is working on a way to make the meetings open and closed at the same time, so the candidates’ identities will be protected, but constituents of WKU will still be able to learn about their qualities.

“There might be a way to do some hybrid where they’re anonymous online, and you can ask them questions,” Richey said.

Additionally at the meeting, Director of Academic and Student Affairs Josh Knight said he plans to work on a partnership with WKU athletics to increase attendance at various sporting events.

“We have great programs, but attendance has always been an issue,” he said.

In the student affairs report, Emily Houston said the committee would hopefully be distributing the first wave of computers for the SGA’s Earn-a-Computer program by next week. In the sustainability report, Savannah Molyneaux said the committee would soon be implementing a bagless initiative at the Subway locations on campus.

During the meeting, Nick Conrad announced the newly-formed eSports program has obtained a practice room in Garrett Conference Center and will meet with Dell representatives on Wednesday to get computers and equipment.

There was no unfinished business from last week’s meeting on the agenda. During its next meeting, the SGA will discuss Bill-7-16-F which would allocate $300 to fund the International Diplomat’s “Home Away From Home” event.

The next SGA meeting will be held Tuesday, Sept. 27 at 5 p.m. in the Downing Student Union student senate room.

Reporter Jamie Williams can be reached at 270-745-6011 and [email protected].