The Student Senate set up a table outside of the Doudna Fine Arts Center to survey students about possible campus improvements.

This table will be set up every Thursday of every month for the rest of the semester.

Senators had students fill out a sheet of paper that asked about any areas of campus that could be improved that the students might have noticed so far this year.

Speaker of the Student Senate William Outzen said this year, student outreach is of the utmost importance to the senate, which was what motivated him to start surveying the student body regularly.

“This is a new initiative I decided I wanted to start this semester,” Outzen said. “Every senator represents about 200 students here on campus. We need to understand, what do they want to see? We were elected by them, so we need to represent them.”

Outzen said he will be looking at the responses and sending them off to the proper committees on Student Senate.

He and the rest of the senate will continue working on the suggestions for the rest of the semester.

Jensyn Morrison, chair of the student affairs committee, said she agreed with the importance of student outreach, especially for student representatives.

“It is very important for us to get out there and understand what the students are thinking, what the students are saying, what they need, things like that,” Morrison said. “Each one of us plays a very important role with the student body.”

Both Morrison and Outzen said it is important to speak for the students and explore how they are feeling so the Student Senate can better help them.

“We’re trying to get their voices a little bit heard,” Morrison said.

Outzen said the other goal of the outreach table was to put names to faces and help voters see who they have elected.

“We get a lot of good conversations with our students … They get to see we’re actual normal students,” Outzen said. “Also, we can come back next month when we do the event again and say hey, look, we listened to your responses, we went out and we fixed this. We made the improvement that you wanted to make. That way, we’re actually representing their interests.”

This is not the only activity that Student Senate is planning to do this year.

Being planned is an ROTC social and a potluck with the Student Senate, which the senate hopes will encourage even more conversations between groups of students, Morrison said.

Both Outzen and Morrison said they hope to continue improving the campus around them, no matter what activities they decide to host.

“My goal is to make every semester better than last semester,” Outzen said.

Brooke Schwartz can be reached at 581-2812 or bsschwartz@eiu.edu.