Student Association President Aysha Seedat discussed her ideas to increase student attendance at sporting events on campus at the organization’s weekly meeting.

At its Monday meeting in Maxwell Auditorium, SA’s assembly also elected new members, and a number of other topics were discussed, including the potential for a student athletic fee and Syracuse University’s upcoming review of career services operations.

Seedat expressed her concern Monday that, while turnout at men’s basketball games is strong, attendance at other sports isn’t the same, and brought up ideas to the assembly to increase student attendance.

Some ideas that were discussed included the possibility of free food, having Pepsi products available and giving away jerseys, apparel and signed posters.

In addition, Seedat proposed the possibility for a point system through which students would gain redeemable points for going to certain events.

She added that she met with Deputy Athletics Director John Cunningham and other SU Athletics officials to discuss methods to solve the attendance issues.

Seedat also brought up student concerns regarding other athletic issues, including grievances that men’s basketball season tickets do not include games that occur when classes are not in session.

But Seedat said in response to this that officials fear that if the men’s basketball season tickets included those games, the student section would appear very depleted because not many students would be around to go to games.
Seedat discussed how she countered some of those concerns with a number of suggestions, including the possibility of making seating free to students over breaks, or at least letting student season ticket holders come to those games for no additional cost.

Additionally, the possibility for a student athletic fee was further discussed.

Since last semester, Seedat has been working on a proposal to create a $100 student athletic fee that would cover the costs for football and men’s basketball season basketball tickets. Seedat said research has been done to look into the costs of athletic fees at other schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) that have athletic fees.

Seedat and the assembly also discussed the career services assessment. SU hired TruMann Consulting, an outside consulting firm, to conduct a review of the university’s overall career services and the services provided by individual schools and colleges.

Seedat said that because different colleges on campus have different career services options, some confusion often arises. The assembly members proposed ideas for the review that they hope will be in the assessment, including evaluating companies that recruit on campus and discussing certain problems that arise in regard to recruitment situations.

Additionally, the assembly elected Tracey Ford to be the Board of Elections and Membership (BEM) Chair. Paulina Colon, Janine Bogris, Michelle Guo, Lavina Sabnani, Sudan Zhuang and Obarima-Yaw (Obi) Opoku Afriyie-Baah were elected to serve on the BEM board.

Maria Baires, Dominik Weber and Charley Dominguez were elected to the Finance Board; Jack Harding was elected to the SA seat on the Finance Board; Drew Jacobson was elected to be the Class of 2019 Alumni Representative; and Katie Rochefort was elected to serve as a member on the Judicial Review Board.

Published on February 23, 2016 at 12:57 am

Contact Nina: nsleeds@syr.edu