For many on campus, Student Government’s role is a mystery. This semester, however, they are hoping to change that.

LSU Student Government plans on increasing awareness of what they and their members do through various avenues, including social media outreach, events, and directly contacting organizations in an effort to inspire more students to get involved.

Psychology senior and Senate Director of Outreach Elizabeth Laurent said that the senate will be looking to collaborate more with the executive branch in order to communicate more effectively with students. They also will be emailing all student organizations that SG is open to helping them secure any resources they need for their operations.

Laurent said SG will continue “Meet SG Mondays” in Free Speech Alley to inform students about what SG does and to encourage students to get involved. 

They will also have a table specifically for the senate where they will and explain the bills and initiatives they have put forth, as well as their plans for future bills. Although the date hasn’t been announced, Laurent is confident that “Meet the Senators” will get off the ground this semester.

Laurent hopes the events SG plans to put on will encourage more students to be informed about what SG does, reiterating that senate meetings are open to the public and invite students to voice their opinions and watch the proceedings. 

“I think that it is so important for students to know that they can come to that and see what we do,” Laurent said. “Obviously they don’t have to sit for the full three hours, but just to kind of see what goes on.”

Political Communication senior and Student-Body President Lizzie Shaw said that SG has been working on improving their website, a project she said should be completed sometime in the fall semester. Shaw hopes that improvements on the outdated website will make it easier to navigate. 

She also said she will be establishing an executive press secretary that will provide press releases to student media and communication with student organizations, as well as administration, with updates on SG’s activities. 

Shaw stated that their communications department will be looking to develop a strategic plan to reach more students.

“We’re working on balancing our communications department with more of a marketing point of view because we can push out all the graphics we want, but if we don’t have a strategic plan for these events and initiatives then we’re only doing half the battle,” she said.

Students can reach out over email or social media to voice their ideas and to learn more about SG, Shaw said. 

Engineering senior Colin Raby, a senator for the College of Engineering, said SG needs to do more to reach students, but he does think they are improving. 

“I think our social media can be better, honestly,” Raby said. “I think in the past it’s been used for purely programming, it’s like ‘oh we’ve got this big program coming up…great,’ how about you show the bill signing. How about you show the 20 bills you signed this week that are hypothetically making the student experience better. The Senate passes all of this legislation, we’re not just sitting in the Union for hours on a Wednesday for the heck of it.”

SG enshrined into the constitution that the executive branch is supposed to deliver a state of the student-body address. Raby believes that the executive can improve this, as well, by delivering the address in more detail. covering more of what SG has accomplished.

“Too often there’s no real incentive to pursue effective communication across students on campus beyond the students that are highly involved in student government that could benefit the next election,” he said.

Raby also thinks that SG should reach out more often to student organizations to inform them about the resources SG offers. Projects around campus SG was involved in should have signs saying that SG was involved in those projects, so students can see the impact SG has.

He added that SG also needs to improve on being more transparent about their activities and how they’re spending their money, which comes largely from student fee bills.

“Very few people in Student Government understand how money is being allocated; now that I’m chair of budget and appropriations, I want to work with our executive branch,” he said. “I want to work with anyone that can get information out to students and say, ‘hey, this is what we’re spending money on.’”