Senior English major Caleb Judy was elected student body president in Student Government elections last week, and he is turning his attention to Recognized Student Organizations as one of his goals for next year. Judy plans to create a Student Leadership Council to advise, aid and ultimately help fund RSOs.

“Right now, there really isn’t any support structure for the student organizations,” Judy said.

He said it will be a major project taking the allied cooperation of the Student Government, student organizations and its members and the governing faculty entities.

“We haven’t gotten to the final stage,” he said. “What we’re going to do this summer is to set the timeline to figure out how long it’s going to take.”

Drawing similarities to Eastern’s Panhellenic and Interfraternity Councils that preside over the greek system, Judy said the leadership council will be an offset of the Student Government to be headed by Lisa Flam, student vice president for student affairs.

Like sororities and fraternities, RSOs will have recruitment periods structured by strict rules and regulations and publicized by a vice president of recruitment.

Currently, “RSOs don’t have something like that,” Judy said.

In addition, an online RSO database will allow Eastern students to match their hobbies and areas of interest with comparable student organizations. Noting many RSOs are small in size, Judy said he wants the Student Leadership Council to provide additional funding to those meeting criteria such as having a certain number of members.

“A lot of organizations don’t have the luxury of 100 members who pay dues,” Judy said.

The lack of funding among campus organizations is further complicated by the fact Eastern is one of the few state schools that does not allocate money to its student organizations, Judy said.

“He’s really going to have to get a lot of different people together to make this a reality,” said Student Senate member Tim Edwards.

Last year, Student Government had a RSO council “that didn’t go over too well,” Edwards said.

Though no exact timeline currently exists, Judy said he aims to hold a trial period for RSO funding as soon as the second semester of next school year

“If (the trial period) went well, we could create the extra student account for fiscal year ’05 that begins on July 1 of that year, Judy said.

The additional Student Government account will be solely for the Student Leadership Council, Judy said.

But before this can happen, Judy said approval must be given by the Apportionment Board for allocations of funds to RSOs.

The Apportionment Board membership consists of three faculty members appointed by Faculty Senate and several students appointed by Student Senate to allocate funds to university organizations.

Other goals:

But the first item on his agenda is to implement a Student Senate mentoring program to aid new senate members, Judy said.

Judy plans to talk Wednesday with new speaker of the senate following his or her appointment at the Student Senate meeting.

The speaker of the senate will oversee the mentoring program that will pair each new senate member with a more experienced member to provide advice, answer questions and make sure tasks are being completed, Judy said.

“Right now if you’re a new student senator, you’re not told what to do,” Judy said. “You pretty much have to learn everything for yourself.”

Student Senate member Lucy Boone said she thinks the mentoring program will help, but does not think it will be very different from the current less-structured system.

“It’ll definitely help,” she said. “But as far as my experience on senate, I never have had any problems getting my questions answered.”

Judy also intends to strengthen school pride and the notion of a unified campus community by increasing awareness of past Eastern traditions and developing new ones.

A lot of students and campus groups “don’t see the bigger picture,” Judy said referring to the importance of student unification. “I don’t think there’s connectivity between students.”

It is traditions such as the fight song or the school mascot that bind and identify Eastern students, Judy said.

And “right now I don’t see many Eastern traditions very visibly,” he said.

Judy plans to create a pamphlet outlining school traditions and what Eastern students are like for the 2004 freshman summer orientation program.

Continuing with plans to understand Eastern’s traditions, a committee will be put together to research the university’s history, Judy said.

“This is something I can definitely form in the fall and start working on,” he said.

Judy is optimistic about the fall semester, saying “I want to be a presence right when freshmen get here.”