Student Senate is now at 50/50 with the amount of meetings this semester that have not reached quorum versus ones that have.

Only 14 senators were present of the needed 15 to meet quorum and hold an official meeting at Student Senate’s meeting Wednesday night marking this the fifth unofficial meeting out of 10 this semester.

Residence Hall Association, RHA, President Jade Stone gave a presentation at the Student Senate’s fifth unofficial meeting of the semester.

The 14 present senators as well as the executive board of the Student Government listened to Stone give a presentation on what RHA is, what RHA does and more.

RHA is a similar organization to Panther L.E.A.D.S. and interacts with the delegates from all of each residence hall’s Panther L.E.A.D.S. RHA does oversee and holds weekly meetings in conjunction with Panther L.E.A.D.S.

Each hall’s Panther L.E.A.D.S. has multiple RHA representatives that attend the weekly Panther L.E.A.D.S. at their residence halls as well as the weekly RHA meetings Thursdays at 5 p.m.

Both organizations create programs for students living in Eastern’s 11 residence halls. While some programs are sponsored by the individual residence hall’s Panther L.E.A.D.S., there are also programs and conferences led by RHA.

There are leadership positions available in RHA for the next school year. Presently, for the remainder of the school year, there are two open positions, the applications for these positions just closed.

“Currently, the applications are closed just because we’re getting so close to the elections,” Stone said. “It would be kind of hard to be inefficient for a few weeks and then basically be elected right out of it. But if they’re definitely interested in it next year, for sure. They can definitely contact me contact the RHA email, so rha@eiu.edu or any of the advisors listed as well.”

The advisors are Dennis Cristina, Beccah Maley and George McClellan. All contact information for the advisors can be found on the housing website.

The positions in RHA run for an entire school year. The upcoming elections are for the 2023-2024 school year.

One of the positions is the National Communications Coordinator. In this position, the student will attend various conferences, both in the region that Illinois universities are a part of and nationally, as well as pass legislation bills at these conferences and bring a group of student delegates with them to these conferences.

The two biggest conferences are the Great Lakes Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls and National Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls. GLACURH includes all colleges and universities in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ontario, Canada that have residence halls on its campus.

“So they would go to the conferences for GLACURH which is a regional affiliate and send boardroom, pass different legislation pieces there,” Stone said. “And then they also like put together a delegation to go with them. And things like that.”

There is also the Vice President of Administration and Finance, VPAF, which goes over RHA’s finances, takes roll at meetings and acts as a secretary for RHA.

“VPAF does a lot with kind of the secretarial duties, roll call, finances, things like that,” Stone said. “But then they also do a recognition effort to recognize all of my reps.”

For those interested in a leadership position, contact Jade Stone, Dennis Cristina, Beccah Maley, or George McClellan.

Katja Benz can be reached at 581-2812 or at kkbenz@eiu.edu.