SGA Creates New Committee to Create Unity

Liberty University’s Student Government Association is showing their dedication to inclusion and equity for all groups of students on campus with plans to establish a permanent Diversity Committee.

The Community Affairs Committee currently oversees student representation, but Constance Schneider, President of the Student Body, and her leadership team hope to reflect and represent the student body through a future Diversity Committee. The Diversity Committee’s focus would be to hear from and represent all students at Liberty, including ethnic minorities, students with disabilities, international students, athletes and other groups that may not already have a connection with SGA, according to Schneider. 

“What we are really focused on this year is making sure that we truly reflect the student body well,” Schneider said. 

According to the director of the Community Affairs Committee, Luke Zirkle, the plan is to have representatives from different student clubs and groups, especially minority groups, on the committee. While the specifics of who would be on the committee are not confirmed, the representatives may be the presidents of the various clubs. 

“When people in those clubs are electing their president, they know they are also selecting someone who is going to sit on this diversity team and advocate for their needs at the university level,” Zirkle said. 

The Diversity Committee would help ensure that many different student groups on campus are included in the conversations and decisions within SGA, according to Schneider. 

“We want to not only have members from these specific groups on the committee, but we also want to hear their voice, their ideas, and know how SGA can engage that student group on campus,” Schneider said.

This committee will also help students embrace diversity within the body of Christ. Zirkle sees it as an opportunity to show unity in diversity in the way that the people on the committee would work together and advocate for each other. 

“Because there would be such great cultural and ethnic diversity represented in that team, that team would actually probably have a greater opportunity to display the unity of Christ,” Zirkle said.

The advisory purpose of the committee would allow SGA leadership to be directed in ways that promote unity.

“We want to have students advise us in how we can best fit our events to make sure they cater to the whole student body,” Schneider said, “We want to be advised in what we say and what we do to make sure that our message is welcoming and inclusive.”

This committee would help open the door for students to be involved in different initiatives and have access to different resources on campus that they may not have been involved in before, according to Zirkle. 

“Having a diversity committee would help give greater voice to different training resources, and opportunities and events and initiatives that each of these individual groups may be doing for their specific communities,” Zirkle said. 

Schneider believes SGA already has a great structure for a committee that oversees diversity initiatives with the current Community Affairs Committee. She hopes to implement a model for a more permanent Diversity Committee by the end of this year. 

“We have a really good group in this committee that strives to represent the student body,” Schneider said, “Hopefully moving forward we can actually make that change in SGA.” 

Zirkle is hopeful that a permanent Diversity Committee in the future will allow for more ideas and voices to be considered. 

“We think that finding a way to bring this team into fruition is a way to better lift those voices so that more ideas can be heard,” Zirkle said.

Mia Nelson is a News Reporter.