by Daniel McDermott

Did you know that we have a Student Union? If you did, do you have any idea what the Student Union does? This year, one of the main goals of the Student Union is to make students more aware of what we are doing for you. We have nine committees that are working on several different student issues.

The first committee is the Marketing and Communications committee. They have been using Facebook, Twitter, OrgSync, and eventually YouTube to give the students updates. In addition, the committee will be helping to publicize student organization events. If you are interested in this service, please contact the head of this committee, Kinsey Campbell.

The second committee is the Aesthetics Committee. They started out by looking into the possibility of getting a bonfire pit somewhere on campus. Due to current fire codes, this is unfortunately an impossibility. They are now assessing what the student body’s priority list is for improvements on campus. Make sure you look for the survey in the future to make sure that your opinion is heard.

The third committee is the Bus Route Committee. The purpose of this committee was to work with the city of Dubuque, Clarke and University of Dubuque to establish a bus route targeting college students. This bus route will take students to movie theatres, grocery stores, and the mall during the day and at night will shuttle students downtown. The city of Dubuque has passed a grant to fund the project and it is expected to be implemented during this semester.

The next committee is the Student Entertainment Center Committee (SEC).  Created by Chris Higgins last year, the SEC would be a place centrally located on campus, where students can gather to socialize. It is intended to have big screens, arcade games, billiards, comfortable furniture, and many other possibilities. The preliminary plans have been handed over to the Aesthetics Committee to see if this is actually a student priority.

The fifth committee is the Wider Selection in the Pub Committee.  So far they have worked with Loras College Campus Dining to get chicken wraps back into the pub and offered other suggestions that will help improve Campus Dining as a whole. Also they are going to start a conversation about bringing alcohol into the Pub—no promises.

Our sixth committee is the Campus Pride Committee. This committee will strive to improve school spirit by encouraging attendance at sporting events, theatrical productions, band concerts, choir concerts, and many other activities. They are responsible for the new “This Week at Loras” email that students have received and will be selling Duhawk Nation shirts outside the Café this week.

The seventh committee is the Sustainability Committee, which is dedicated to reducing Loras’ carbon footprint. One way they are doing this is the new UCarShare program, making it possible to rent a car by the hour to run errands. Hopefully students will begin to leave their car at home and utilize this program. It has a very easy website to use and is affordable. Please make sure to test drive our new Prius and Cube that we have on campus.

The final committee is the Mission and Identity Committee. The members of this committee serve as our student representatives, and will also be in charge of organizing our Student Union service project and keeping track of service hours.
As you can see the Student Union is hard at work for its students. As committees accomplish their goals, they are rolled over into new committees. Most importantly, we are constantly looking for student input. Feel free to contact your class representatives or email us at student.union@loras.edu. We would love to hear your suggestions. Make sure you like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LCStudentUnion.