Ryan Harman and Chip Fallaw know USC students have good ideas.
What they don’t know is whether the students know how to bring their ideas to fruition.
That’s why Harman, student body treasurer, and Fallaw, speaker of the house of delegates, are hitting the brick paths of campus to hear what student organizations have to say.
Upon taking office, Harman said one of his biggest goals is to make the student body aware of the funding available to them from Student Government. Additionally, Fallaw said students may not be aware of the voice they have within SG in the house of delegates, which was started last semester.
Harman and Fallaw are planning to send out an email to all of the organizations on campus, explaining the tour and what students stand to gain.
After the initial email, they plan to launch an interactive calendar sometime in the next week to send out to all student organizations on campus on which members can register for a time to have the two come discuss a potential relationship between their groups and SG.
“We’re coming to meet with them if they’ll have us,” Harman said. “We want to make SG about the students.”
Harman said that for USC’s student organizations, Fallaw provides organizations a voice where the treasurer’s office provides financial help.
“The house is a forum for organizations to get together and talk about what they want,” Fallaw said.
A hot topic in the house recently, according to Fallaw, has been on the issue of room reservations for meetings and gatherings, something many delegates are hoping to remedy over the course of the next year. And if the organizations already represented in the house have complaints, there are sure to be others around campus who do too, he said.
With more than 400 student organizations on campus, Harman and Fallaw realize the feat they’re taking on is going to be time-consuming.
“We’re hoping to start next Tuesday and visit organizations three days each week for the rest of the semester,” Fallaw said.
After being inaugurated Wednesday, Harman said he was looking forward to working with Student Body President Lindsay Richardson, Student Body Vice President Donnie Iorio and the student senate but most of all, the students that make up the organizations on campus.
Harman said the tour is happening at the very beginning of the new SG leaders’ term to build an infrastructure to let organizations communicate with their SG counterparts.
“We want to put in the work on the front end (of the term) to get students excited about using their funds,” Harman said. “Students have the potential to get money for everything.”