By Martin Paredes/south news editor
A local justice of the peace swore in the next batch of SGA officers on South Campus April 23.
Keyvel Alston, Dylan Luster, Emily Bell, Peidad Ornelas, Delia Morales and Juan Silva filled the roles of historian, senate chair, parliamentarian, secretary, vice president and president, respectively.
Photo by Bogdan Sierra Miranda/The Collegian
Co-adviser John Lundberg said the event expressed the importance of SGA.
“Student government is the elected body that’s meant to represent all of the students on campus,” he said. “They play a very important role in not only helping to determine funding for various clubs around campus but also in providing a leadership role and setting examples for the rest of the students.”
Lundberg said he was looking forward to the future, working with the new officers.
“I’m going to miss the old class a lot,” he said. “They were excellent. I came here in the middle of their terms, and they really helped to bring order out of chaos … I’m really looking forward to working with the new class, I don’t know them as well yet, but they certainly seem like an outstanding group of students.”
Silva said he wanted to move up from Latin American Student Success Organization president to SGA president to have a bigger impact.
“This was the opportunity I was looking for,” he said. “With L.A.S.S.O., I was limited because it was on the same level as a lot of other clubs and organizations. Now as SGA president, I can make a greater impact and serve in a greater way to the student body.”
Silva also said there is an issue with how minority clubs communicated.
“I’m going to try and do my best to bring all organizations together, to promote student success and diversity,” he said. “Because, even though we have diversity, we are still not working together as well as we could be.”
Silva said he witnessed the lack of communication firsthand during his time with L.A.S.S.O.
“You’ll have an African-American organization on one side doing their own thing while we (L.A.S.S.O.) would be on the other side doing ours,” he said. “Sometimes we’ve been working on the same project but since we don’t collaborate, each organization just does what it wants.”
Former SGA president Austin Perrotti gave Silva his vote of confidence and said he has seen him do great things in the past few semesters.
“I think he’s going to bring a tremendous sense of pride, community and diversity of the student government,” he said. “Here at Tarrant County College, we sometimes struggle tremendously with having students become more engaged with many of our clubs. Juan really helped more clubs have their presence increase on campus. With L.A.S.S.O. especially, he really strengthened the Latin American community on our campus.”
Precinct 5 justice of the peace Sergio De Leon was asked during the police department barbecue April 8 about swearing in the new officers and happily agreed.
The former TCC South student said he was honored to be back on campus for the event.
“I really have a special place in my heart for this school,” De Leon said. “It is a great institution, one of which the outgoing leadership should be proud of and certainly the new incoming leadership will be proud to represent.”
