Programs or ideas that the Student Government proposes throughout the year don’t always originate on campus.

Every year, Student Government sends delegates to the Conference on Student Government Associations at Texas A&M University.

The four delegates will be leaving at 4:30 a.m. Saturday to attend the conference and will return on Sunday.

Student Senate members Jeff Melanson, Leah Pietraszewski and Rich Higginbotham will be attending the conference. Dave Keyes, student vice president for academic affairs is also attending the conference.

Pietraszewski said she is really excited about the conference.

She plans on bringing back program ideas back from the conference.

According to Cole Rogers, student vice president for student affairs, First Night originally came from the conference.

First Night takes place the night before classes start in the fall with a countdown of the start of the school year.

Delegates get ideas outside the box, Rogers said.

Adam Howell, former student executive vice president, attended the conference twice, and both times he brought back five or six different ideas.

One of the ideas he used for the Student Action Team was called Faces not Figures.

Students would write about their hardships they had paying for college. Their picture would be next to their testimonial. These were handed to Illinois legislators, when the Student Action Team traveled to Springfield.

People need to be accountable at the conference, and not waste student fee dollars.

The Student Senate approved a $4,358 allocation from the Student Government budget in November to send four delegates and one adviser to the conference.

If the delegates do there job it is an excellent conference, Howell said.

“It’s a great experience for any student leader,” he said.

According to the COSGA Web site, approximately 550 delegates attended the conference in 2006.

The delegates attend workshops, speakers and roundtables at the conference.

In the workshops, schools present programs that have been successful on campus.

Freshmen orientation and increasing school spirit were presented at the conference last year, Rogers said.

Delegates are broken into groups with delegates from comparable schools to discuss issues relating to those schools.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the keynote speaker when Howell attended the conference.

Big name speakers – all having to do with leadership – speak at the conference, Howell said.

Other speakers in the past included Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger who inspired the movie “Rudy.”

To visit COSGA’s Web site click here.