“Service in Action” was the slogan that prompted students to elect the now outgoing president and vice president Darrell Broussard and Mark Higgins one year ago.
Now, as Broussard, Higgins and the rest of their administration leave office and watch new leaders step into their roles, the former executive officers look back on a year full of successes, good times, failures and shifting priorities.
Last spring, the 2002-2003 administration was left with the task of filling the shoes of 2001-2002 president Patrick McCune and taking SG to a new level.
“Every year it gets better,” Broussard said. “We’re building on a lot of hard work. The challenge to follow up gets greater every year, but also each year the efforts get better.”
Broussard said he is pleased with his administration’s accomplishments, especially their efforts to concentrate on projects by continuing traditional SG programs and initiating new ones.
Last year, the Service in Action ticket ran on a list of platforms promising to serve students by making SG a proactive body of leaders, Broussard said.
Broussard and Higgins promised students a campaign to monitor Dead Week, a Semester Book application for student groups, an updated and complete calendar of campus events, a traffic telephone and a campus construction Web site. They also promised to continue and build on the efforts of past administrations.
Outgoing Chief of Staff Marcie Maxwell said Broussard, Higgins and the rest of the administration “truly had a love for helping students” and showed that through their dedication to service.
Broussard said they initiated a campaign to monitor violations of Dead Week during the fall semester. The campaign resulted in a few extra calls and sparked a few investigations.
Although they wanted to add a two-day holiday to Dead Week, the administration’s research proved the holiday would not benefit students as they had anticipated.
Broussard admitted that not every platform promise was accomplished during the year. He said this was not due to a lack of effort or organization, but instead a shift in priorities because of unexpected events.
“We feel like we had to be flexible on a lot of things,” Broussard said.
      Some of the administration’s goals, like creating a telephone line for students to call for information on campus traffic, had to be pushed to the back burner because of unanticipated issues like campus safety, Broussard said.
Other members of the outgoing executive staff had similar views on the “failures” of the administration.
“We came in with a lot of great ideas, more than we could possibly get done, but we also had to do a good job prioritizing,” Maxwell said.
While some goals were not directly accomplished, Maxwell said many of them have turned into long-term projects.
The Semester Book-type application for student organizations is still in the late stages of testing. Guy Pyrzack, outgoing director of information technology, said he hopes the application will be available in the fall.
Broussard said the University welcomed the idea for a campus events calendar, but the final completion of the student organization application on PAWS will eventually make the calendar more readily available and more complete.
The Broussard/Higgins administration accomplished its goal of creating a campus construction Web site, but Broussard said he wishes they could have worked more to develop it. SG passed the responsibility of the site onto the Office of Parking and Transportation, but it is not very user-friendly or updated, Broussard said.
The administration counts many of its greatest accomplishments as ideas that came about after the year began.
Broussard and Higgins each counted “Celebrate Louisiana,” a week of activities meant to inform students about the culture around them, as one of their greatest successes and hope it will become a SG tradition.
Broussard, Higgins and Maxwell said they also are all proud of the SG-sponsored memorial service for the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Higgins said the administration’s effort to raise students’ awareness of civic issues is their greatest accomplishment.
Several members of SG worked to help educate students about the statewide senate election last fall, Higgins said. They helped register students for absentee voting and educated them about the Stelly Plan and other pieces of legislation.
Maxwell said the administration’s efforts to educate students about SG’s programs and how they can get involved is a definite accomplishment. Several SG members visited two-thirds of the English 1001 classes to inform them about what SG does and how they can get involved. Scott Levy, director of campus affairs, and other SG members tabled weekly in Free Speech Alley asking students questions and encouraging them to offer feedback to their student representatives. SG also reached out to students by working to educate students about the Master Plan.
Broussard counted the administration’s work on the Collegiate Action Team, an organization bringing together students from LSU and Southern University, as another big accomplishment. SG took part in a CAT leadership conference, breakfast and basketball tournament.