Among other topics covered during the Student Association meeting on Monday night, SA members highlighted the successful completion of an inaugural Mental Health Awareness Week.

SA President Eric Evangelista recognized Vice President Joyce LaLonde’s hard work and her being a pivotal part of the events during the week.

LaLonde found the weeklong event was a massive success within the university community.

“It was powerful to see people spread positivity,  open safe spaces for conversation and be vulnerable with one another and themselves,” LaLonde said.

The events took place from Oct. 2-7, beginning with a co-occurring disorders presentation. Oct. 3 was National Day Without Stigma, a day organized by Active Minds. The nonprofit organization aims to empower “students to speak openly about mental health in order to educate others and encourage help-seeking,” according to its website.

The opportunity of providing a stigma-free zone was extremely important to LaLonde, she said, who saw this as one of the primary goals of the week-long event.

During the week, there were two days of meditation on Oct. 4 and Oct. 7, as well as therapy puppies brought to campus to help students to cope with stress on Oct. 6.

Evangelista said the biggest event was Syracuse Setbacks, which took place on Oct. 5. Syracuse Setbacks was an opportunity for students to hear from the university faculty and staff about their personal setbacks as professionals and how they overcame those challenges.

LaLonde said she found this event to be the one that meant the most to her, adding that seeing some of them come together to share their stories of resiliency was powerful.

After the event, a student approached LaLonde with a “thank you” card that had been distributed by the Office of Health Promotions earlier in the week. This card, the size of a business card, had written on it: “thank you for … showing me the light again.”

“That is a testament to the importance of the week and of the event,” LaLonde said. “That card is reason enough that mental health needs a place at the table at Syracuse University.”

Looking at the week as a whole, LaLonde said she only received positive feedback about the events.

“Many students reached out to me and posted on social media about how thankful they were for this week,” LaLonde said.

At the meeting, there also were finance board elections. Cierra Britton, a junior political science and Spanish double major; Stanley Hernandez, a sophomore undeclared in the College of Arts and Sciences; Ambrose Gonzalez, a sophomore finance major; and Khalil Jean-Baptiste, a sophomore finance and accounting dual major, were voted on the SA Finance Board by the voting members.

SA Chair of Academic Affairs James Franco gave a presentation regarding the work that has been going on within his department. One thing that was drawn upon was how the department is looking at having appropriate access to resources on campus, such as extending library hours and providing more study space.

“Our library is where the most traffic comes. We are looking at how we can turn that building into something more modern with the amount of space that it has,” Franco said.

Franco also shared that he is working on establishing a legal studies major on campus as well as potential minors in Japanese and astronomy.

Evangelista spoke about the shooting that occurred close to campus on Sunday, sharing that he was in contact with SU’s Department of Public Safety. He said he plans to share some of the students’ thoughts about the lack of communication with DPS in a future meeting.

LaLonde also said that bikes can now be rented more than once a week, but not on consecutive days as part of SA’s bike share program.

Published on October 10, 2016 at 11:22 pm

Contact William: wgmuoio@syr.edu