In an effort to increase transparency, the Student Government Association (SGA) revamped its website and social media presence. 

The most recent addition to the website initiated by junior Abby Waxler of the Academic Affairs Committee is an Academic Resources section which includes professors’ office hours, grade boundaries, a list of printer locations on campus and a list of study spaces on campus organized by hours, computer availability and whether or not they are a silent space. 

Communications Director junior Curt Reeves and Webmaster sophomore Caio Brighenti re-launched the website earlier this semester. 

“The role of the website is to provide transparency and information. The website that I was passed down had information from three years ago on it still, so it was clearly not maintained; it was not updated. We wanted to find the best way to make the easiest possible maintainable website. The structure is still the same, the content is still the same, but we redesigned it completely,” Brighenti said. 

The website now also features weekly live streams of Senate meetings and other events, which was a feature that was in the works for a semester. Additional resources will be added to the website in the near future along with frequently asked questions and helpful links. Brighenti would like to see the website more widely utilized by students and consistently maintained by future webmasters.

“As we continue to add more resources it will become a better guide for students. I think it could turn out to be really helpful, if it’s updated correctly,” Waxler said. 

The website team will also continue to improve students access to SGA members by adding the contact information and photos for all members of the governance board and Budget Affairs Committee (BAC), the only remaining groups missing from the website. The massive size of the student government has posed a challenge for Brighenti in completing and releasing new content. 

“You have to talk to so many people to do anything. [SGA] does so many things that it [becomes] so difficult to make a small thing happen because you have to go through so many steps. A lot of bureaucracy,” Brighenti said.

In addition to increasing accessibility and transparency, Brighenti and the SGA hope to make the website a more useful tool integrated with student experience on campus. While this past semester has been focused on updating the website’s content, this coming semester will be focused on marketing to make the website more widely used. The new website has already seen an increase in user traffic from last year.

“I think SGA has a poor reputation. I think this is a huge step in the right direction to increase transparency and make people aware of what we do,” Waxler said. 

Students can access the SGA website at https://www.colgatesga.com and follow their Instagram @colgatesga. 

Contact Emily Rahhal at [email protected].