This year’s Student Govern- ment Vice President, Melinda Hatfield, is working her hardest to ensure that she can do ev- erything she sets her mind to. A double major in Advertising/ Graphic Design and Studio Art, Hatfield has a lot in the works for the student body. As the SGA’s Vice President, it falls to Hatfield to head the event planning for Homecoming as well as working with the faculty and staff on the student handbook and other policies that the SGA would like to have a hand in changing.
Hatfield has been in SGA since becoming an organiza- tion representative for her sorority, Alpha Sigma Tau. Then after a brief reprieve from the SGA for a semester, Hatfield came back as an organization representative for ALEF, another organization in which she is heavily involved, and becoming the SGA’s Webmaster. From there she applied to be the SGA secretary and decided that in her last year she was going to be in the Student Government Association, she wanted to “step up and do more” so she then ran for Vice President last spring.
This position, however, comes with its fair share of frustrations. Hatfield, who got the SGA webpage back up and running, says her biggest frus- tration lies in those who don’t use the resources in which they are provided. “[My biggest frustration is] people who don’t take the initiative to be informed. The SGA didn’t used to be this transparent. You could only get SGA minutes by coming to the SGA meetings; now they are sent out in the email to every student. We have everything updated and people are choosing not to know.”
Hatfield has gotten everything ready for Homecom- ing on October 11th and her biggest goals for the rest of this semester are to format an open visitation policy with the Housing Staff and implement a “dead week” in which students have the Thursday and Friday before finals off to study. Hatfield is excited about the rest of the year. “This year’s SGA is great.” She remarks, “I hope everyone is excited about what I have planned.”