The Student Government Association added first-year assistant positions this semester, which the elected students say will help them advocate for their peers and learn about the governing body.

SGA Vice President Ethan Lynne said 34 first-year students and first-year transfer students joined the body this fall, 11 more than last year and the highest number in at least the last three years. Lynne said the SGA Senate added first-year assistant positions to the Legislative Budget Office, legal counsel, communications team and committee on diversity, equity and inclusion to strengthen the body’s knowledge of new students’ needs and encourage more first-years to get involved in the SGA.

Lynne said adding positions will encourage more first-years to learn about the body and prepare them to apply for other positions in the spring, like SGA Senate seats. He said many current SGA senators and senior staff held committee assistant and legislative adviser positions as first-years, which helped them learn how the body operates.

First-years could previously only serve as legislative assistants, taking notes at committee meetings. Lynne said the new roles will allow first-years to “shine” in the body by allowing them to participate in roles in the budget and DEI offices and give them a chance to expand their knowledge of the body as a whole.

“The assistant positions are a great way for first-years to get involved and kind of learn how everything works,” Lynne said. “It’s how I got involved. It’s how most current senators, my senior staff, as well as President Fitzgerald all got involved.”

Lynne said the SGA expanded roles for first-years, so they can develop specific skills that they can then apply to future positions, like legal practices and crafting legislation. He said adding roles for first-years has also helped speed up projects within senate committees because the body can appoint them to work on initiatives across multiple departments.

“Traditionally, freshmen have just been kept in the committee assistant position, and we kind of wanted to move past that and let, you know, people’s talents shine through if they’re better suited for another area,” Lynne said.

First-year SGA Sen. Justin Liu (At large-U) said he joined the SGA because as a first-generation college student, he wants to help represent other first-generation first-year students who he said are underrepresented in the student body.

“Because of mentors, and because I saw that there wasn’t as much representation for first-year students, I felt like I wanted to be that voice,” Liu said. “I wanted to help represent undergraduate first-gen students.”

Liu said he wants to work with the Residence Hall Association and the SGA Committee on Student Life to update and potentially rerecord the virtual tours available on GW’s website for students who aren’t able to visit the University before their first year. He said the existing tours don’t adequately show prospective students what residence hall spaces look like because of a lack of virtual tours available for some of the room types.

“Many students that aren’t able to physically come on campus to get a visit, they can’t really exactly see what the rooms will look like, and that can be very scary, even for people to come onto campus not knowing what the rooms will actually look like,” Liu said.

Avery Boyd, a first-year assistant on the Committee on Education Policy in the executive branch, said he has worked with his colleagues in the committee to research and develop an Indigenous Peoples Scholarship, which he said is available at other universities across the country and would expand accessibility to higher education for Indigenous communities. He said the committee is currently developing a proposal they can present to officials in the hopes that they will then implement and fund the scholarship at GW.

Native American student enrollment is 0.1 percent for undergraduate students and 0.3 percent for graduate students at GW, according to enrollment data on GW’s website.

“Diversity is a really important part of what makes not even just an organization like SGA impactful or beneficial, in the classroom, just in the school as a whole, I think having diverse opinions, diverse people really broadens your view of the world,” Boyd said.

Boyd said he has also researched GW’s syllabus website by comparing GW’s system to other universities that display the course syllabi for students when they register for classes. He said he wants students to be able to view course expectations before they register, instead of flipping between the online course catalog and schedule of classes, in an effort to streamline the registration process.

“It would benefit us, especially with the workload,” Boyd said. “I can say, ‘Okay, I’m looking at three of my classes, two of them have a lighter workload, I’m looking at the syllabus for this one class that’s a little bit heavier,’ you can balance your schedule a little bit.”

Aiden Linkov, a communications assistant for the legislative branch, said he wants to make the orientation process easier for students transitioning to college by bolstering conversations with SGA senators and SGA executive and legislative staff. He said these conversations would help first-year and transfer students navigate classes, professor relationships and expectations for assignments.

“Everybody kind of comes from different educational backgrounds, and I think having everyone be able to understand what GW is looking for, what certain professors are looking for is, I think, going to help people in the long term,” Linkov said.

Linkov said he will improve SGA communication with first-year students by initiating more conversations between orientation leaders and incoming students, so they can better learn how to navigate campus life. He said that there is room for “improvement” in the structure of GW’s orientation week to allow incoming students to feel more comfortable when entering their specific majors.

“Instead of going to huge lectures that we had for our respective colleges, I think having more one-on-one Q&As with people that have gone through that, like every other student, I think it’s going to be more beneficial,” Linkov said.

Cheydon Naleimaile-Evangelista, who serves as an executive assistant to Lynne, said he wants to create an environment like his home in Hawaii, where students show kindness, appreciate their differences and help each other. He said he wants to investigate why some students feel there is a divide between the SGA and students on campus after hearing from students across all years that there is a “barrier” between the two groups.

“I believe the student government is supposed to be of, by and for the Revolutionaries,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said. “I want to see why some students don’t feel that way and what I can do in SGA to diminish the barrier.”

Naleimaile-Evangelista said he wants to “learn the ropes” of SGA operations and consider what issues students care most about so he can get “more involved” in the body during his sophomore year.

“I want to learn what the SGA truly entails, what they have to offer to students here. And so far, it’s been really good. I feel the SGA this year is getting a lot done,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said.

Julia Yam, a first-year student who serves as a student experience assistant in the SGA’s executive branch, said she wants to “alter” the course material in the first-year experience classes that are required for all incoming students. She said she wants to speak to first-year students in the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences to gain feedback about what they would like to get out of the course and gear course material toward ensuring students feel as comfortable as possible in their “new home” at GW.

“Especially since I’m a freshman, it could be hard transitioning into college, so I hope to gear towards that and try to just make students all feel welcome,” Yam said.