Press Clipping: Passaic County Community College - ASGA DC 17- National Student Government Summit

ASGA DC 17- National Student Government Summit

By Stephany Heilbron

On Wednesday September 27, a group of SGA members and stem students met up in the Student government association office early in the morning so that they could leave to go to Washington for the ASGA conference which was being held in Washington, DC. The ASGA conference is meant to help student government leaders and those in a student government become better for their campus and students.

There were students from many community colleges around the country as well as universities, the farthest students coming from Hawaii and the Caribbean.

Our school’s student government arrived to DC mid afternoon on Wednesday. On arrival all of the students and advisor Maria Marte set all of their belongings in their hotel rooms and went to go eat dinner at Art and Soul directly across the hotel.

After dinner the group set out and walked to several monuments such as Lincoln memorial, National War World II memorial, Martin Luther King’s memorial and several others.

Thursday evening Official conference kick-off
September 28,2017

On Thursday we went to one of New Jersey’s house of representative’s Bill Pascrell’s office and spoke with Elaina Houser who is the Economy Policy Advisor in the office. Ms. Houser explained how the house of representatives works in comparison to the senate as well as what types of problems are usually brought up to Mr. Pascrell on a daily to weekly basis.

After the meeting with MS. Houser ended there was a break from 10:30 AM to 2:00 PM. At 3:00 the group went to the National Museum of African American History, the trip to the museum caused many to feel emotional. The events that occurred is an extremely important time in the history of this country.

The conference officially kicked off at 7:00 PM, the speaker Christopher C. Irving who is the executive director and CEO of the Miller Institute for Leadership and Diversity in America was extremely enthusiastic and engaged with the audience in the best way possible.

The first training and roundtable occurred that very night; Irving, told every member of the audience to leave the current table they were sitting at and join another table with Student Government members from other schools.

Networking occurred from the start of the conference, students and advisors from all over the country spoke about issues on their campuses and offered suggestions to one another on how to handle each possible situation with the experiences they had at their own colleges and universities.

Friday morning Workshops
September 30, 2017

Friday morning was the beginning of the workshops that all students had to attend as early as nine in the morning. The conference offered seven different workshops by the hour with a fifteen-minute break in between each one.

Each workshop was different from the other as presenters had different information to give out to students and different methods in giving out the information.

Some preferred PowerPoint presentations while others preferred interactive activities between students from different schools.

For example, Butch Oxendine a presenter at many of the workshops held throughout the week preferred for students to interact with one another in a hypothetical situation that could occur with a student body member and an SGA representative at any campus.

After our school ended their workshops at three-thirty in the afternoon, we went on a tour at Capitol Hill and toured Lincoln’s library.

Saturday
September 30, 2017

On Saturday all colleges and universities had a light breakfast at Union station and then went to workshops at 9:30 in the morning.

Some of the workshops that specific day dealt with signature programs that a student government association could create a signature program that would stand out for students and for the specific college.

Each workshop was designed around a certain theme by each speaker, for example, “Death by Committee: How SG Committees Should Work” by presenter Chris Jachimowicz explained what a committee should and shouldn’t do in order to work properly and professionally and how they should approach situations with a clear and level-headed mind.

After the workshops ended we went to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s memorial and dinner with another school in the late evening.

Sunday
October 1, 2017

On the final day of the conference the group went out to eat breakfast at a nearby Starbucks and then went to the final two workshops, which started at nine in the morning and ended at 11:30.

Several workshops throughout that day were ethics workshops, leadership skills, roundtables, etc.

After leaving the hotel at 12:00 we stopped for lunch at a restaurant in Baltimore Maryland and then came home.

At the end of the conference everyone learned may different skills that can ultimately benefit SGA and their own persons in the long run as well as having offered each student a different set of memories that they can look back on in the future.