SGA President looks to aid students during term

Shivam Patel, ETSU Student Government Association President for the 2020-2021 academic year, has faced unforeseen challenges to his goals as president due to the rise of COVID-19 and its impact on campus.

“It’s certainly been a steeper learning curve to learn all the backgrounds of the administration, meetings, how things are operating on the university level,” Patel said. “And it’s all through a virtual interface, so it’s hard to compartmentalize that and delegate those tasks.”

According to Patel, the annual SGA retreat, which happens a week or two before the beginning of the fall semester, was canceled this year.

“We could not properly train everybody, meet everybody and get them ready for the justice or the senate,” said Patel.

Instead, they had accelerated online senate meetings to prepare.

“There was a decent bit of backtracking,” said Patel.

Despite the drastic changes to SGA’s initial goals, they are still working to accomplish as much as they can. Some work, however, has been delayed, such as former SGA President Aamir Shaikh’s food recycling initiative with Sodexo.

The plan to create a syllabus bank, which will be a site where students can access past instructor syllabi, is still in the works.

“We’re excited about that,” said Patel.

Right now, the council is focused on aiding students.

“Our current plans are just to help students through this time in surviving COVID-19 and still being able to find a place to make connections with others and to still get their education,” said Patel.

Freshman are one of Patel’s biggest concerns. The fall announcement of all classes moving to an online system of deliver was short notice. The SGA is also focused on receiving feedback from ETSU students.

“We need freshman, seniors, anybody to give us ways that they’ve been struggling or something that they need from our end to advocate for,” said Patel. “The SGA president email is always open.”

Ultimately, Patel said, “Don’t fall out of love of learning itself, and understand that you’re going through one of the toughest times you’ve ever experienced, so give yourself grace. And know that once you survive this, there can’t be another semester that can stop you.”