After a welcome week with record attendance to promotional events,       Student  Government has been checking things off of its to-do list, said SG president Natalie  Butler.

All of the research on its current projects is complete, and now the focus is on getting feedback from student groups on what improvements, such as room renovations, need to be made in order for student activities to run more smoothly, she said.

“The semester‘s already pretty much underway,” Butler said. “Now that everyone is back on campus, we really want to sit down with a lot of different groups to work with them.”

This year is the first year that SG will have first-year representatives, she said. Wednesday was the first night freshman candidates were allowed to campaign.

“This group is kind of our guinea pig,” Butler said. “They’ll be full members. They’ll have full voting rights and be able to bring things up that represent their constituents. The idea is that we’ll coach them so they’ll know how things work, and they won’t feel lost.”

Transportation is a large part of the platform that Butler and her vice president Ashley Baker are supporting. Butler said they are currently trying to work with Parking and Transportation Services to allow students to purchase parking permits which would let them park on campus at night. Under current policy students are not permitted to purchase nighttime parking permits, she said.

Student Government is working with the city to prevent the installation of parking meters in West Campus, and with a stakeholders’ group to make them as student-friendly as possible, said John Lawler, College of Liberal Arts representative. The city is attempting to put 900 new parking meters in West Campus by January, he said. The ordinance was put into place about a year ago but was postponed because the original proposal was proven to be inadequate, he said.

“We’re trying to create a public process so that student renters can find out about it, protest it and possibly defeat it,” Lawler said. “The next step is how we’re going to fight the parking meters. That will be a big, arduous process, letting students know where to go to protest, to get their voices heard.”

Printed on September 15, 2011 as: SG looks to cooperate with organizations, protest meters