SGA Office | Photo by Grace Ramsdell | The Wright State Guardian
A recent resolution from the student governing board will create a strategic task force to help facilitate initiatives on campus. Here’s what to know about this new team.
The task force
Survey data that the previous Student Government Association compiled last year inspired the creation of the task force; the survey data revealed that a majority of students wanted a sports bar on campus, according to SGA President Blake Bailey, who reviewed those results and determined that a task force would be a good way to follow up.
“I was like, okay, well I would love to make a task force that would figure out how we can do that,” Bailey said.
SGA passed the resolution to assemble the student task force on Aug. 23, 2022.
According to Bailey, the task force will be available as a resource for future SGA administrations and will be responsible for forming proposals for large scale initiatives on campus.
Dean of Students Chris Taylor observed that the creation of this task force will create a consistent flow between annual administrations and initiatives.
“Some of those projects take multi years, that’s the challenge for particularly an SGA presidency,” Taylor said. “So, hopefully part of that is, you know, let’s try to put something in that other administrations can pick up and continue to perpetuate.”
Sports-themed dining facility
The first major initiative that the group will research and potentially propose is a sports-themed dining facility. This building will potentially serve as a new hangout spot for students looking to catch a game or talk to friends, according to Bailey.
Bailey reflected that data revealed an overwhelming number of students were interested in this idea.
“I don’t have the exact number, but I do know that it was more than 80 percent, and that’s something I noticed from last year,” Bailey said. “If this overwhelming amount of students that I represent wants this, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”
According to Taylor, students at an advanced leadership retreat earlier this year presented large initiatives on this scale. Taylor served as one of the judges on the feedback panel at the event. Taylor noticed that most of the presentations were related to establishing a new hangout space on campus.
“Of the nine presentations, I think five, in some way shape or form, identified a campus gathering space that could serve multi-purposes different than what we have now for gathering spaces,” Taylor said.
Some current spots on campus where students can relax are the Student Union and the Hangar. According to the Student Union event page, The Rathskeller, which was a former gathering space in the Union, had a similar scope to the sports-themed dining facility.
Also from the SU event page, The Rathskeller was available to students, faculty, staff and off-campus groups for different events like poetry slams, movie nights and karaoke.
While the project will not be tangible for a few years, ideally it will be open to students, alumni, faculty, staff and the entire WSU community, according to Bailey and Taylor.
Adam Randolph, a two-time graduate from WSU, said that as an alumni, the sports bar facility is an interesting idea because of its potential to bring people together through sports, but ultimately it’s not of major interest.
“As just alumni, I would kind of say that honestly I don’t care. Just honestly,” Randolph said. “As a student, yeah, I think that would be a nice little hangout spot.”
The sports-themed dining facility is still in the preliminary phase, with no further updates on its development.
“It’ll be open to anyone, ideally, but again that’s nothing we’ve planned yet,” Bailey said.
