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Student Government Joins Forces with Student Alumni

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On April 19, the Student Alumni Association (SAA) held the annual Gift to Tech Celebration to award the winning campus initiative, Excel, with $40,000. Excel wasn’t the only recent winner of funding, though. 

The Student Government Association (SGA) chose to provide $20,000 to both the second and third place winners of the Gift to Tech program — the Housing Homeless Tech Student Initiative and the Campus Victim Survivor Program.

“SGA is always looking for ways to support student life on campus,” said Justin Eisenberg, vice president of campus organizations for SGA. The organization began funding the second and third place Gift to Tech winners last year after Eisenberg and then-undergraduate president Dillon Roseen noticed they had the means to do so.

The pair then reached out to SAA to see if they could donate to the Gift to Tech program.

“We were thrilled about the projects this year because they identified an emerging need on our campus,” said Eisenberg. “This seed money can go a long way to helping kick start these initiatives.”

The funding from SGA was made possible by the student activities fee. After the donation was approved by the both the Undergraduate House of Representatives and Graduate Student Senate through a traditional bill process, the second and third place projects received $20,000 each.

SGA hopes to continue its contributions to Gift to Tech finalists in the future.

“I would like to see a tradition of SGA helping these projects,” Eisenberg said. “Students are obviously passionate about them and I would love to help foster growth within initiatives that the Tech community cares about.”

The Housing Homeless Tech Students initiative will use the funds to provide Georgia Tech housing for those in need. The funds will not replace financial aid or student loans, but will be an emergency fund for students who find themselves without resources or financial support during the semester that could lead to a loss of housing.

The Campus Victim Survivor Program is part of Georgia Tech’s VOICE initiative for sexual violence prevention and education. The funds will be used to provide emergency resources to survivors after a trauma. The funds will also help VOICE to hire staff members and create a stipend for student volunteers to operate an on-call response system.

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Julia Faherty
  • Created:04/25/2016
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016