Tommy Nierman and Holly Henry, both student senate members, hosted their first Senators In Training meeting and gave an overview to the Senators in Training of what the program entails.

“You’ve got to learn to crawl before you can walk. What we want to do here is teach you the basics including public speaking and writing bills,” Nierman said.

The Senators In Training want to accomplish many goals from being in this program.

“I want to be able to become a better leader and help the different causes on campus,” Dani OBrill, a freshman Spanish major said.

Antonio Woods, another senator in training and a freshman social sciences major, had similar goals.

“I hope to gain more leadership knowledge and get a more in-depth view of college leadership opposed to high school leadership,” Woods said. “I’ve always been a part of high school student government, and I feel that SIT could open doors as a good college level experience.”

Alex Lais, a freshman undecided major, also had input for what he plans on accomplishing.

“I hope to do as much as I can for the school and get involved and take the steps to try and make bigger changes in the future to help the campus and students,” Lais said.

Lais also has a high school student council background and mentioned how he was not too involved and how he can become more of an involved person through Senators In Training.

The Senators In Training were also put on committees in the student government to give them more experience for if and when they get elected to the student government.

“We want you guys to push yourselves, you’re already starting to show yourselves as leaders,” Nierman said.

Many of the Senators In Training already have ideas to implement in their assigned committees.

“I want to better the recycling center at Eastern, especially in the dorms,” OBrill said.

OBrill also mentioned how not all residence floors have paper recycling and how most college students are prone to use a lot of paper.

Woods is on the Diversity Committee and has ideas of his own.

“I mainly want to get rid of the stigma of separation between races and replace it with unity,” Woods said.

Henry had positive feedback for how the meeting went.

“In committees, they will see what (student senate members) do outside of the student government meetings and I think that it was great that they had ideas of what they wanted to do,” Henry said.

Henry also mentioned how this experience would help the Senators In Training in the future.

“They will get progressively deeper in student government and we can show them how easy it is to get involved and help them to speak their minds,” Henry said.

Nierman also explained the mechanics of student government and how each senator represents 500 students at Eastern Illinois University. Senators In Training meets every other week on Mondays at 7 p.m. in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-7942 or rjrodgers@eiu.edu.