GW student organizations now have access to a centralized office stocked with supplies for their groups.
The Student Association created a resource center on the fourth floor of the Marvin Center that is open to any student groups on campus. The SA created the center to reduce the amount of money and time the SA spends buying and distributing common supplies to student organizations.
SA President Erika Feinman said it will be more efficient for the SA to purchase common supplies in bulk, rather than on an individual basis.
“We see these issues where we are essentially throwing money away when student orgs ask for things like scissors, staplers and tape really just the essentials you need to run a student org,” Feinman said. “This will be open starting the first day of classes as a place where students can come and find really any resource they need.”
The resource center is stocked with scissors, tape, markers and other essential items student organizations commonly request to run their groups, Feinman said. In the past, student groups that needed supplies like paper to make flyers had to ask the SA to allocate money from the organization’s budget and use one of the SA’s debit cards to purchase the materials.
SA Executive Vice President Thomas Falcigno said the center will make daily operations more streamlined for student organizations — an effort he hopes to continue in other initiatives throughout the year.
Falcigno said the SA is considering further reworking the system to allow students to submit documents online they need printed and receive an email when the pages are ready to pick up.
“Instead of organizations having to go out with their card and buy paper themselves and submit it to us, they are just going to submit whatever they need printed, and we will detract it from their account,” Falcigno said.
Allison Coukos, director of public relations for the GW College Republicans, said the resource center will help student organizations communicate better with the SA.
“Communication is difficult, especially coordinating printing with the SA,” Coukos said. “It will be nice to have a centralized place where everything can be posted.”
Levi Debose, vice president of communications for the GW College Democrats, said the resource center will allow organizations on campus to use their money allocations wisely by reducing superfluous costs.
“This helps our organization since we don’t have to buy scissors, paper and other supplies, which over time become a burden on our budget,” Debose said.
Debose added the new resource center will be especially helpful for smaller student organizations that cannot afford to spend their allocations on office supplies.
“Smaller progressive clubs and organizations are able to use their allocations on the issues that they care about, which only makes their voices more amplified in our campus political dialogue,” Debose said.
Elise Zaidi contributed to reporting.
