Student Government Association and Student Bar Association leaders plan to hold joint leadership meetings, organize collaborative events and coordinate policy efforts this semester after University-wide budget cuts strained funding for GW Law student organizations.
SGA Vice President Liz Stoddard and SBA Vice President Quinn Biever said improving communication between their leadership, co-sponsoring programs and helping student organizations share resources and identify alternate funding sources will help both groups navigate the University’s 3 percent fiscal year 2026 budget cut, which has reduced student organization funding pools, cutting nearly $50,000 from the SBA’s budget and potentially affecting the SGA’s spring allocations. Stoddard and Biever said increased collaboration will also allow the two bodies to coordinate advocacy and raise shared concerns with University administrators, like calling on officials to be more vocal against federal immigration activity on campus.
“Our syllabi are different, but the issues that we’re facing are collective and unifying,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard said she campaigned on building closer ties with the SBA after noticing that the two student governments, which both represent law students, rarely interacted despite sharing similar responsibilities, like advocating for students and allocating funds to organizations. Stoddard attended the SBA’s Sept. 23 meeting to outline her plans for increased collaboration, and Biever said he will attend the SGA’s Oct. 13 meeting to hear from student leaders about how the two bodies can further coordinate.
The SGA, which serves as the entire University’s student representative body, reserves three seats in the SGA Senate for law students and requires that at least one of seven justices on the SGA’s student court be appointed from the law school.
Stoddard said she wants the SGA and SBA to make more policy decisions and resolutions that support each other, like a unified message calling on administrators to better inform students about federal immigration activity on campus. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the restaurant Circa at Foggy Bottom on Sept. 24, with University officials confirming federal agents detained “a number of individuals” but did not specify how many and said they had no evidence any GW community members were affected.
Stoddard denounced the raid at the latest SGA Senate meeting on Sept. 29 and said she would work to hold University administrators “accountable” for student safety.
She added that the SGA should pass supportive resolutions of graduate student unionization on campus, even if it means the University administration “gets mad” at student leaders and work to include SBA leaders in meetings with top University officials.
“The SGA is not a mouthpiece for the administration,” Stoddard said. “The SGA is an advocate for students at the end of the day, and that’s how it always should be.”
Biever said the collaboration efforts began after SBA Senator Punam Chopra, who also serves as an SGA policy adviser, connected him with Stoddard over the summer. He said after discussing shared challenges like University funding cuts and student safety concerns, both student government bodies agreed to explore more formal collaboration, like holding joint leadership meetings.
Biever said both governments could benefit from more coordination due to tighter budgets across the University, including a nearly $50,000 cut to the SBA’s budget this year. He said collaboration between the SBA and SGA could help student groups share resources or cut costs for large programs, “broaden and strengthen” student voices and help limited funds “go farther.”
“If it can save money on one end, it can help other organizations on another end, and that’s crucial, given the current budget situation of the school,” Biever said.
Biever said as he’s heard heightened student concerns about safety due to the increased presence of ICE agents and National Guard troops in D.C. since August, he thinks law students could apply their education in a “practical manner” by offering legal insights about protesting safely and informing students outside the law school of their rights when interacting with law enforcement.
“I thought that is kind of a good idea in terms of ways that we can that the law school can be sort of in solidarity with the undergraduate school,” Biever said.
Chopra, an SBA senator and SGA senior policy adviser, said she hopes collaboration between the two bodies can break down barriers between schools and help students connect across disciplines. She said greater cooperation could make students “stronger together” by encouraging inclusivity by ensuring more student voices are represented in policy discussions, instead of the SGA’s small number of law student representatives.
“If they don’t know about certain parts of the wider community, how are they going to, first of all, think about having these policies, shape the policy so that they actually benefit everybody, and then people who don’t know about the policies, don’t know that they’ve got these options available to them,” Chopra said.
Madison Yohe, the SGA Senate’s chief of staff, said the SGA aimed to become more collaborative with graduate and law students after hearing feedback leading into this year from graduate students who felt the body did not do enough to represent their interests and voices on campus. Yohe said ideas like including a graduate student section in the SGA’s weekly newsletter could also help boost engagement.
“If people feel that they aren’t being represented, obviously that’s a problem,” Yohe said. “Especially for an organization that not only gives out funds, but we deal with some very real world issues in the SGA.”
Omer Turkomer, the SBA’s attorney general and an SGA law student senator, said many law students are unaware of the opportunities available outside of the law school because it is an “insulated community” from the rest of the University. He said collaboration between the two governing bodies would raise awareness about campus-wide resources for students and organizations.
“There are so many opportunities outside of law school that the law school organizations and students can benefit from, but they don’t really get a lot of that information or are aware of it,” Turkomer said.
SGA Sen. Cheydon Naleimaile-Evangelista (CCAS-U) said University-wide budget cuts have created challenges for both the SGA and SBA, and he thinks working together would allow the two groups to advocate jointly on financial issues affecting student organizations. He said, as chair of the SGA’s student life committee, he wants to hold more events that bring graduate and undergraduate students together.
“We need this collaboration to ensure that we are having a sense of shared advocacy on the issues that matter to us, which include the funding cuts,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said.
