Alex Gervais ’28
Managing Editor
The Trinterview: SGA Presidents Maddi Petrow ’27 and Sriram Jetty ’28
Trinity’s Student Government Association may not always be listening to Bob Dylan, but its leaders are strongly asserting that the times, they are a-changin’. Backed with a conviction to make an impact on campus and working together in a wonkily harmonious pairing, Maddi Petrow ’27 and Sriram Jetty ’28, the co-presidents of SGA, are carving out a real role for student government and student voice on campus.
The duo first met in their capacity on the SGA Finance committee during the ’25-’26 academic year. Now, after a tight election and a decision to ultimately take the reins together, they look to be the true yin and yang pairing that can re-build SGA into a bullhorn for student advocacy on campus.
I sat down with Petrow and Jetty for an hour-long interview at the Tripod office to discuss their macro and micro plans for the future of the school, the recent SGA elections and how we can build community at Trinity, together. Below is our full interview:
Can you both introduce yourself and talk about your history with SGA?
Petrow: You want to go first?
Jetty: My name is Sriram Jetty, and I initially ran for a student government in the fall semester of my sophomore year, when I ran to be a class senator. I learned about the process, and I chose to join SGA because I struggled with public speaking and speaking to new people, so I wanted to put myself in a position where I was forced to speak to new people. It turned out great. I got a lot better at it. When I was a senator, I took on a significant amount of responsibility relative to most senators. I was part of the budget committee. I was a part of the Academic Affairs Committee, which handles academic petitions and anything in that realm. I was also the co-chair of SOOC alongside Ini, who is the 2028 class president. SOOC is the student oversight and organization committee. If any student wants to start a club on campus, they have to get registered with us, and how they do that is they have to draft a Constitution, and they have to get the required forms to make that club official through the process. If they get approved, then they can get funding in about, what is it, 6 months? Is that the deadline? After 6 months?
P: I believe it’s 10 weeks.
J: Ten weeks. So after 10 weeks of being approved by SOOC, you can access funding. And I’m sure if you are a club that wants to get started, we can perhaps make some adjustments for you. It’s not a strict deadline. And I ran to be president, at the end of spring semester, but me and Maddi, I figure we can talk about that a little bit after, but then me and Maddi came to an agreement, and now we’re both co-presidents.
P: I’m Maddi Petrow, or Madison. Maddi’s with no E, by the way. But when I first joined the student government, I began by accident. In high school I applied to be the student representative for the Board of Education, and that just so happened to be a student government position; same thing kind of happened here. I joined the budget committee, for no reason, really, I just thought it was kind of cool. Whenever there’s an opportunity presented to me, I typically take it and I go full in. So I took it. I joined the fall of my first year. By the spring semester, they actually needed a secretary, so I stepped up and became the secretary, and then after my first year, I stepped into the role VP of Finance, which was last year. And this was pretty much unheard of for a sophomore to be on the executive board, which was really awesome, especially in the VP of Finance position. So it was such a privilege and I’m really happy about that experience. I then had the opportunity to work with the rest of the executive board last year and everyone was awesome. Of course, that’s where me and Sri met, I think, right?
J: Yeah.
P: Well, we met on student government, maybe even budget committee, actually; and then we both ran to be presidents.
How do you both think the role of SGA president has evolved since you were both freshmen?
J: That’s a good question. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really involved in SGA in my freshman year. I commuted, so I wasn’t really close to campus culture at all, like whatsoever. So I have no baseline understanding of that. I would say since last year, though, I think, let’s be honest, one of the biggest issues is SGA has been very fragmented, and that’s why we chose to be co-presidents. We need to rebuild SGA from the ground up. That involves a lot of leg work, and I’ll be honest, one person cannot do it. You have to divide and conquer. It takes a lot of talent, takes a lot of skill, takes a lot of effort and one person cannot contribute that much in a single semester, especially when taking on an academic workload.
P: Yeah, we definitely delegate very well. It seems to be that every time I’m busy, then Sri’s filling in, and he was in class the other day, he missed an email. I got back to it. It’s completely vice versa all the time. We do work very well together.
You both kind of stole my next question. Co-presidents is kind of an abnormal setup. Can you talk a little bit about what led to being co-presidents?
J: What led to being co-presidents is the fact that Maddi and I recognized SGA had to be able to be rebuilt from the ground up. We were both leading candidates for the presidency. The consensus was we both wanted to be president. It was in or out.
P: Neither one of us was stepping down, it wasn’t going to happen.
J: Yeah, exactly. We were both great candidates and we both understood that SGA needed to be rebuilt. We were on the same page about that. And in terms of what we wanted for SGA I have my own personal goals, she has her own personal goals, but we were almost in alignment with 99% of things, which happened to be a really good coincidence. So when we were in the final stages of the election process, we were thinking about what we could do together rather than individually. We figured we’d rather have two of us really make this happen rather than one of us step up, take the role on, and one of us just leave SGA. We’re both valuable assets to the student government, and I think it’s important that we’re both a part of it.
P: For sure. Nothing to add.
If you both put yourself in your shoes in May of 2027, what is the one thing you both hope SGA will have accomplished? You’re looking back on the year and you’re thinking: ‘This is what we got done. This is our thing.’
P: Do you think we can provide the numbers that we got from Dr. Davis?
J: Yeah, go for it.
P: We were able to add a few questions as a student government last year in the sense of community survey that went out from Dr. Davis and the Office of Community and Belonging. We all talked about it during SGA; we voted and we decided that we would present the two following statements: statement one, “I have a good understanding of what the SGA does and how it sports students.” Overall, 44% of students either strongly agreed or agreed. Only 44% of the student population understands what we do!
J: I can add on to that. One thing we want to leave behind when we graduate in May 2027 is, we can’t speak to policy changes yet, Maddi and I are still formulating exactly what we want to do, and we haven’t had an elected Senate, so we can’t really speak to that, and I don’t want to make any promises I can’t back up. I don’t like doing that. So as far as the legacy I would like to leave behind, if you go to any private liberal arts college, student government is extremely competitive, like extremely competitive. And I love that this year we were able to gather enough interest to the point where this was an election where I was looking at the ballot and I was like, ‘wait, I genuinely can’t choose between 4 candidates because everyone is such a great candidate.’ That’s what I want. By the time I graduate, I want SGA to be a well oiled machine. I don’t want it to be contingent on Maddi or I running the show and being a face of it and getting everything going. I want SGA to have a significant amount of interest from the student body to the point where everyone is running, every single class has 10, 20 people lined up, and the SGA president, they’re someone who’s capable. So I’d like to lead and pass the torch to someone who can take on all of that responsibility, and I hope by the time I leave, well, the goal is by the time Maddi leaves, it’s we rebuild SGA to the point where it’s really set up. By the time I leave, I can pass the torch and it can continue for generations, like it used to run in the past.
P: Back to the number that I was talking about, overall, I mean, 44% of students, either strongly agreeing or agreeing with the statement is crazy. We’re the student government and it’s such a privilege to be a part of it. We really want to share that privilege.
J: We also have a lot of public policy majors, and this is an extremely strong resume builder for them. This is the experience that you cannot, that cannot be replicated in any other part of campus. If you’re a public policy major and you genuinely want to go into government or politics, then this is something you should absolutely be part of, and you should get the experience beforehand. We work with the administration, faculty and students on a daily basis. I mean, Maddi and I are just coming back from an important meeting today. So, there’s a lot of work involved, but it’s a great time, great experience; can’t be replicated.
P: Not to mention the amount of economics majors that we have. We struggle to get people to sit on the budget committee, yet it’s an incredible opportunity. We allocate a lot, a lot of money and it’s a privilege to be a part of and you get to see some confidential information, like, who wouldn’t like that?
J: Yeah exactly.
You both touched on elections. This year, I’ve noticed just walking around campus that the class of 2030, they are really running for this. They’re really going hard. How has that experience been like watching the class of 2030 really embrace these SGA elections?
P: [Sri] can answer this, but I have something on how we think that that started. So maybe I’ll just start with that. First of all, faculty and administration have been amazing with both of us being presidents. There’s never been a time where they’re like, ‘okay, we need one person.’ It’s always been offered to both of us, which is really incredible. We were given the opportunity to speak at Convocation, which was so awesome.
J: Incredible experience.
P: So, we did the speech together. Again, it was awesome, and the first-years got to see us first there. And then we were given the opportunity to speak during orientation where we were able to join in on one of the presentations. During this presentation, we talked about the new time, place and manner protest policy and we also were able to shout out student government to every single first-year that was sitting there, which, again, was an incredible opportunity. And I think that’s definitely where the interest started.
J: I think we have built a reputation so far that student leaders are very important on campus. We’ve worked with administration, and we’re gonna be very involved in future events. We will be having a conversation with President Lugo during fall weekend which is going to be another opportunity for us, and it’s great to meet with alumni, families and students, and spread the word and represent Trinity in the best way possible. So that’s exciting. And as for what we think about the elections, we are absolutely stoked. I think we have set a good example for freshmen to make them want to run and be one of us in the future, take on our role and we love it. I cannot express how many people have come up to me and asked me for advice and feedback on how to win the election and how to campaign properly. Everyone’s done a phenomenal job, everyone’s worked hard and there’s posters all around campus. When I walk by them, I’m like, ‘holy smokes, everyone is competing.’ And they’re so creative, I’m looking forward to working with them. While elections did conclude on Friday and polling has closed, there were a few issues that came up during the election process, and so we have to address that, which we did, and we went through a thorough process by talking to administration and really, really coming down to a conclusion on what’s acceptable, what’s not. So we will have election guidelines in the future for spring elections, and they will outline everything very clearly because the difference between a few words is the difference between coercion and not. But yeah, we’re excited to work with the new freshman, we’re really looking forward to that.
And say I was a freshman and I didn’t know about elections and ended up running not for anything. How could I still get involved with SGA?
J: Running for student government is very difficult. You have to put yourself in a position where you might be scrutinized by anything. You have to be vulnerable, right? You have to put your face out there. You’re going to be recognized by people, and that comes with pros and cons. You get recognized more, but your failures will also be in the spotlight. That sucks and we understand not everyone is willing to do that and get out of their comfort zone. Maddi and I, we did, but again, it’s fine not to want to. So we want to increase student engagement with SGA, and how we want to do that is by adding more liaisons to student government. So, Maddi was thinking of a Greek life liaison.
P: We have, in our Constitution right now, a Greek life liaison, a WGRAC liaison and a sustainability liaison, but we want to add athletics, and honestly, we’re not sure what else, maybe a Tripod liaison. We’re completely open to suggestions.
J: We also want to start opening up to our students. Student government meetings are open, anyone can show up. And we want to start making sure that students come in; we want to be scrutinized, we want to see what students want. We want to make sure we do what’s best for students.
P: Speaking of, we’re actually going to open up a student concerns committee. This is going to be twice a semester, we’ll send out an email and it’ll say, ‘hey, respond to this email with concerns.’ We’re expecting to get, you know, 500 concerns, but no problem,we have a whole committee for it. We’re going to try and respond to every single concern that we get. So if we get 100 concerns on food, we really want to say, ‘okay, food is something we have to focus on. Let’s go focus on that.’ Or we could get 100 concerns on air conditioning, who knows? We’ll bring it to administration. We’ll do anything. I mean, we really want to do what’s best for the majority of students.
J: And, like I mentioned earlier, me and Maddi, we don’t have a set of what we want to do, we want to do what’s best for students, and to get that information, we need students to actually be thorough in their feedback. All it takes is a minute of your actual concerns. If you can give us that, we can pinpoint what most students want so we can attack and make changes. This year, I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but Mather food has been getting better. And I promise you throughout the course of the year, as me and Maddi continue working with Jenny Nelson and Scott Jordan it’s going to become even better. Hopefully, we really jump the national food rankings because we’re not doing so great there, but we’re going to get a lot better.
P: They have a new district manager, she works for Chartwells and she’s doing a great job, which is huge.
J: Yeah, she’s doing awesome. If students can give us their concerns, then we can do a great job of prioritizing that. We have a lot of manpower this year, especially with the freshmen. So we can actually get things done. If the students reading this show us that they want change in a specific domain of campus, we will make that happen. I promise you, I give you my word: show us your concern and we will make it happen.
P: Every single concern.
J: Every single damn concern. I want that, every single damn concern, but we need your effort. Please take, like, two minutes of thorough thinking and provide us with concerns. And so when we release that form we expect everyone to respond.
P: Right. It doesn’t need to be full sentences. It could just say “food.” It’ll still be brought up.
If, say, I had no idea how to access any of these feedback options, where could I go? Is there somewhere centralized SGA has set up?
J: That’s actually a great question. So we’re working on a platform that student government is going to use and that’s going to help streamline budget processes. Right now, a lot of it is on Bantamlink, and that’s difficult to use. So we’re gonna make it very simplified. The website will have information about all club events that are going on. So any student can see what events are going on. You’ll have tabs where you can have all SGA documents to the Constitution, what you need, and we’ll also have a very thorough budget process. We’ll make it extremely simplified for you. We’ll have all the forms attached right there. So all you have to do is read, take the forms, fill it out, send it to us, come in, follow the directions there. And I promise you, you will have a great time in budget, and the odds of you getting the funding you require will go up, by a significant amount.
P: As well as, I mean, if anyone has any questions email sgapresident@trincoll.edu and then also reach out to VP of Comms Marin Finan ’29, who is awesome. She’s fantastic.
J: Yeah, and a majority of our communication will be coming from the VP of communication going forward this year.
I asked earlier for a macro idea that both of you had. What is one very micro-level change you want to see on campus?
J: One thing I would like is, I would like a little bit more connection between students. Like, I would like to make a change to the point where every morning, I would hope everyone just says good morning to each other. Everyone says hi, just being a little bit more engaged on campus. And when you’re walking and you’re talking to your friends and you see someone, you know, be like, ‘Hey what’s up? How’s your morning? Hey, how are you?’ Something like that. Just be a little bit more active, and if I could just see, if I could just see campus a little bit more bright in that aspect, I think it would go a long way. Small changes lead to big changes.
P: Adding on to Sri’s point and then I’ll kind of bring up my own point. Orientation leaders were asked an agree or disagree question. Do you feel like Trinity is divided? Not one orientation leader didn’t agree. It was crazy. It was just showing that not a single orientation leader, who are leaders in the community, agree that we are fully connected and intertwined. So that’s definitely something we really want to work on. We’re actually going to host an event at the Office of Community and Belonging. Not sure what yet, but we need to talk about it with Dr. Davis. But that really stood out to me when I was an orientation leader, so I wanted to bring that up, but that’s definitely a major concern that we have. As for me, the micro change is very micro, but I want student government to be taken more seriously. So we’re actually going to begin to dress business casual at our meetings: no more pajamas. I think it’s just a great way to kind of set the atmosphere once we walk into that room at 6:30 on Sunday nights.
J: Exactly. We’re making decisions that do affect students on campus, especially when allocating funding. I mean, without us officially allocating funding, nothing is going to happen on campus, no one is gonna have a good time. So we need to make sure we’re doing a good job, and how we do a good job is by being enthusiastic, ready for the job and being ready to go, and we set that tone by dressing business casual.
P: For sure; and AVP Flores bakes treats every time.
J: Yes, AVP Flores, she makes incredible treats, by the way. Wonderful woman.
P: Strawberry cupcakes are our favorite. Both of our favorites.
J: Yes, absolutely.
How’s the relationship been thus far with President Lugo’s office? It sounds like it has been constructive, but good.
P: We’ve definitely had a lot of communication with everyone. Meg Fitzsimmons, we’ve had a lot of communication with. She’s actually an Alpha Chi Omega, which is awesome and how we first connected. I’m also in AXO, so it was super cool. But yeah, she’s been so awesome. She stops me every time I see her, and she’s kind of brought up things like she was the one who told me that there’s a new director of Chartwells. She stopped me, and she was like, ‘hey, food is a huge concern.’ She wants to work in it. I don’t know if you were here, but on Convocation when we had that food, that was fantastic. That was Meg Fitzsimmons in the President’s Office. She wrote a 5 page paper on exactly what they had to do. If that’s something that we have to do weekly to provide to Charwells, we’re more than happy to do it.
J: Exactly.
P: But it’s been really great. We’ve gotten the opportunity to speak with President Lugo so many separate times and then we’re speaking on a panel with him during alumni weekend, which is going to be really awesome.
J: We have yet to meet with him individually on a frequent basis, but we’re looking forward to doing that, and we’ll be in contact with him soon. But we’ve been in contact with his office and he has an exceptional cabinet, let me tell you. Every single person on there is very personable, great people, and they’re trying to make change. To give you names, Carlos Espinoza, incredible guy, Jason Rojas the chief of staff, incredible guy. I see him in the gym all the time. He’s working hard, he’s incredible. Great people, genuinely down to earth, great people. I don’t think you can find better people to lead this campus than them.
P: Same thing with Scott Jordan, the CFO. He came up to us and he was like, ‘hi I’m Scott Jordan’ and didn’t even say his position, and that was just so incredible. Like, being someone so high up in the school, he still made it a point to come and introduce himself to us, and he wants to work with us.
J: Another name, Rich Majerus, he’s also incredible. I spoke to him earlier today, so I’m at Mather, him and Scott Jordan. Great people. I run into them so frequently and we always have a brief, personal conversation. They’re genuinely great people, I can’t emphasize that enough. So we look forward to working with them in the future.
Maddi, you mentioned AXO. What’s it like being in Greek life and also in SGA?
P: Not only am I in AXO, but I’m also the vice president of recruitment for the Panhellenic Council. So I think that Greek life overall gets a bad rap, for sure. I’m not sure if Sri you can speak on some more because I’m definitely in it and I love it and I’m a part of it, so I don’t really see what a lot of people see, but I love it. I love my sisters and I’m really happy, but we’re supposed to have a Greek life liaison, and we didn’t last year. Or, you know, we did because I’m in Greek life, but that was pretty much it. So this year we have the two presidents from the president’s council, Michael Alpers ’27, and Annie Murer ’27, they’re going to come and they’re gonna sit in an SGA meeting, so that hopefully we can have a little bit more between communication between the student government and the panhellenic council, but not only communication, more events we can do together. I know, actually, the second question on [the survey from the Office of Community and Belonging] is about Greek life; they posed the statement “there are enough non Greek life programming events for students.” 57% said yes, but there’s still that other 40%. So if we can bring in that 40% through student government or through the Office of Community and Belonging and do a three way event there, I think that’d be really great.
J: Yeah. I will say this. I think Greek life is extremely important to campus. Greek life is what makes Trinity Trinity. It produces some of the most social beasts that come out of NESCACs. That is a fact. If you look at any successful alumni, the reason they’re so successful is because of the personability. And on that note, I think it is important to increase the engagement with non-Greek life programming on campus. There hasn’t been a great job in that respect. Greek life is great. Don’t get me wrong. Like past 9 p.m., Greek Life is phenomenal. But before that period, like in the morning through 9 p.m., I think SGA has to do a much better job in terms of programming and having a lot of people come together and have a good time together. I think a lot of offices and departments could do a better job on that aspect too. We hosted a long walk food truck last year during the spring semester and there was an exceptional turnout to that. I’ve never seen so many Trinity students congregate in one area, and that showed us that if we take good feedback and we implement the right actions, we can get students to actually participate. And that’s what we want. Anytime we host an event, we want at least 100 people to show up and be engaged. We want people to have a good time. So that’s the goal. And we need feedback for that. So if the people reading this could give us great feedback, we can give you what you want. We’ll give you everything you want. if you give us the input.
P: That goes back to the fact that we want to do what’s best for the majority of students at all times. That’s our motto for this year.
What is the biggest issue facing student life right now?
P: For student life it’s the lack of community that we feel. I can’t say that I necessarily feel that lack of community. I’m so involved in so many aspects and I’m not sure how [Sri feels], but within the student government we do e-board and first-year bonding, so we’d really try to integrate them.
J: I’m personally all around the board on campus, and so I don’t have that issue. I get along with absolutely anybody and I have a great time with it.
P: You could talk to a wall… for hours.
J: Yeah, I can also talk to a wall for hours. That was really funny. But, yes I think we need to work on our sense of community. And what I mean by that is that I don’t expect everyone to mingle and be best buddies. What I expect is a sense of community in saying, hi to everybody you see, making sure that a familiar face becomes a name. If we do that, then we could create a system where Trinity alumni become very powerful, because if we look at Trinity alumni, although we have a great alumni network who are in great places outside of Trinity, they’re still very fragmented. We have people everywhere, but not a lot of people in one area. So if Trinity can come together, then every single person could become a familiar name and anyone who wants to go into finance, into public policy, into engineering, into computer science could have a system where Trinity students actually have an opportunity to compete with every other school. Look at your Harvard, your Yale; every single person has a structured pipeline, has a sense of community where everyone is supported, it just operates very efficiently. We need that at Trinity. If we have everyone just divided and not just saying hi to people and just being very grouped into a specific group and not expanding out, that’s not going to happen. We need Trinity to become a school that’s exceptional. When all of us graduate, I would hope the legacy that Trinity leaves is the fact that we have produced some of the best alumni that any school has produced and that we have a close community. Because what makes Trinity Trinity is the social scene, that’s what makes Trinity kids so special. They have great social IQ and we need to enhance that by making people come together a lot more. If we do that, we can significantly help the kids who come after us, who come to Trinity to make sure they have the pipeline. They have the structure that we didn’t have, so that they have the chance to actually compete in the real world, where it’s getting more and more competitive by the day.
P: I know anytime I bring up Trinity to not so much people our age, but people my parents’ age, they’re always like, ‘wow, that’s a fantastic school; you must be so smart.’ Which is awesome that we have that reputation, so really working on the alumni network is going to be great. Then also not to mention, we really want to work on transparency. That’s a huge thing that we’re working on. Like we mentioned, with Scott Jordan, we’re working on transparency between his office and our office. We don’t know where some of that student activity fund goes, we’re working on it. However, people sort of have to jump through hoops, like look at and read different things, see if we’re allowed to see it, which is interesting to say the least, that we have to jump through that much to see it. It’s unfortunate, but we’re working on it. That’s also something that we would love to get out to the student body. Here’s what we spend on, you know, not specifically, but here’s what we spend on different categories, like, what would you guys like to see more or less of?
J: Every company files a 10-K publicly and they disclose information that is necessary for investors to make good decisions, but it’s not confidential information that is privileged and could damage someone’s reputation or something like that. That’s what we want, right? Post numbers that students get an idea of what we’re doing and how much we’re spending and where money’s going. But confidential information stays confidential.
You both are kind of talking in a language that reflects what we’re seeing in the wider world. You talk about transparency. You talk about delivering for students. These sound like the things that are actually being talked about in our politics right now. So are there certain leaders, be they in the political or the business world, who you both strive to emulate?
P: So to start that, I think student government is politics. We’re politicians in a sense, so you’re spot on there. And of course, we’re aiming for transparency within budgets, aiming for community, all of that. I don’t particularly have someone that I think we’re really emulating, but there’s a lot of people that we respect.
J: I can give you a name that I respect a lot in the business world. Not for his political policies or anything, but someone I really respect and then who I would like to be like is Jamie Dimon. He is an exceptionally calm person. He thinks very strategically.
P: Can you explain who that is?
J: Yeah, Jamie Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan and Chase. He’s also the chairman, I believe, and he’s done an excellent job. He’s led the financial world through some of the worst crises and he’s honestly one of the leading figures in the world. He is the leading figure in the world and I’d like to emulate his reputation. He’s someone who’s very calm, he thinks through things very efficiently. Anytime he says something, he always executes on it. He also controls investor expectations, if he says something, everyone follows because they trust him that much. If he says the interest rates are going to go up, every single investor, regardless of who it is and what their position is, they are 90% just going to go with it just because word came out of Jamie Dimon’s mouth. That is the reputation he carries, and he doesn’t mess around. He’s a very straightforward and incredible leader. And that’s someone I would like to emulate in that sense.
A: That’s all my questions. Any last words for our readers?
J: Can we get one second?
*Maddi and Sri briefly step into another part of the Tripod office to discuss, away from the microphone.*
J: One thing I’d like to say is, the Budget Committee is the committee that allocates funding to clubs, and we want to make sure that every single student’s voice is represented in the allocation process, it has to be transparent, it has to be fair. That’s the biggest thing, it has to be fair. And the only way it’s fair is that people who come from every single part of campus collectively make a decision on funding. It should not be one person making a decision, it should not be five people making the decision, that is unacceptable. It should be a group of people. We manage a significant amount of money. I can’t give you guys the exact number. However, do the math. It’s $250 per semester per student. You can do the math yourselves; however, we need more people to participate in this process. It’s great experience, it’s a great resume builder, and we need more people in budget. It’s a public committee and anyone can join as long as they go through the vetting process, which is, which we take care of. You submit the form. We do the vetting process, and we let you in if you’re a good candidate. And it’s a one hour time commitment. Every single, every single Thursdays from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in, in Seabury Hall, room N130. And that is a one hour commitment, and we don’t really expect much of you outside of that one hour, other than during that one hour, just be present, be focused on the people presenting and make sure you embody what you would expect someone who’s evaluating your finances would do. It’s not easy presenting in front of a group of 30 people, so make sure you acknowledge that and just be present.
P: We have up to 40 spots that can be filled by students. I’ve been on it for the past 2 years and we’ve only been able to fill about 10 if you can believe it. Again, we really, really want people to join that, especially our first-year candidates who didn’t make it into this election. This is our public committee that they’re able to join, so we hope they join. On our second point that we talked about, we really, really, really want student feedback. We want feedback from you all. We want to hear it and we want to be able to improve. We want to be the first ones to hear about it. Don’t go and complain to your friends. Complain to us. And then we’ll make a difference; we have a ridiculous amount of authority in a way. Admin, faculty and staff, they’re asking us when they want students’ perspectives. But if we don’t know about it, then we can’t do anything about it.
J: Exactly; and as soon as they complain, we care. So at least instead of complaining to your friends about how awful food is at Mather, or how expensive laundry is, complain to us. Like send us the email. When we put out a form, send us some feedback.
P: Yeah, just respond, you know?
J: Give us something. And, yeah, honestly, we can’t do anything without your input. If we have no direction, speed doesn’t matter here. We can’t do anything productive for the people reading this unless you guys give us good input. We can’t emphasize that enough. Good input, quality input, and we need to know what you want, so we can make changes. Without it, we can’t do anything. If you complain, but you don’t care, enough to make that feedback, that’s on you. You shouldn’t be complaining if you don’t have the responsibility to complain about something and do a very simple task to make sure that complaint gets addressed, then you should not have the right to, you shouldn’t be complaining. If you’re not taking 10 seconds, 10 seconds to submit a form that will take care of that complaint, then that’s your own fault. That’s on you.
P: Not only that, but also, like, stop us in the long walk. Stop us in the gym. Um, come up to us if we’re eating. I mean, if I am eating a sandwich from Bistro and someone wants to talk to me, like, please interrupt me, come up to me. Student government is politics. In politics politicians represent people, and we represent the student body. We want to hear that feedback, and we want to have more of an engaged conversation during SGA meetings about stuff that’s going on.
J: Also, I’d like to highlight one thing about Budget Committee. It’s the fact that according to the Constitution, you only need one year on Budget Committee to become VP of finance. I don’t believe that includes being in SGA, so I believe if you’re on the budget committee, you could become VP of finance.
P: Yeah, I was never in the student government. I am here because I started in the budget committee.
J: I think this is a very important distinction. There is no more important or powerful role on this campus than VP of finance. I want to emphasize that. Although the president is a leading figure and they’re the face of SGA, the VP of finance has a majority of the power that SGA has, which is the student activities fund. That is the most prominent role on campus. You are managing a significant amount of money, and the jurisdiction you have is you are the only person who looks at all the confidential information other than the president. You’re the only person who looks through all the confidential information, makes the receipts, makes the check, makes all the spreadsheets in Excel; and has access to that information at all times. So if anything comes up, that’s you, right? You have a huge responsibility. I want to compare this to TCSIF fund. The Trinity College Student Investment Fund has a fund of $1,000,000. The VP of finance is managing that, a very similar estimate of money on a yearly basis. Not a full endowment that’s built up over years of compounding growth. This is a yearly fund that you manage and allocate. That’s on you. You are the person responsible for that much amount. I can’t say the number, but you are the person responsible for a six digit number. That is a huge responsibility. In fact, I think it’s a bigger responsibility than Maddi and I, in that sense.
P: For sure.
This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed. To suggest the next Trinterview, email alexander.gervais@trincoll.edu.