From the new administration of Oakland University Student Congress, we welcome you to let your voice be heard. As your new Student Body President, I would like to introduce myself and our organization’s goals to the student body.

The memories over the past year at Oakland University still resonate in our minds as the majority of students break into a restful summer. For returning students or incoming freshmen, you will have many more exciting and memorable experiences by the time fall semester begins. There certainly have been many exciting events that have occurred during the past year. Among them, they include OU’s first BYOB Tailgate, Thomas Freidman’s speaking engagement, the LMFAO/Girl Talk concert and many other diverse student life opportunities. I could truly say that I have really enjoyed these campus activities, and would certainly like to see events like these continue. We at Oakland University Student Congress believe it is essential to the vitality of our growing community to continue engaging the university population. This will be one of our biggest priorities for the coming year.

Throughout elections, our campaign stood for supporting more on-campus events and for students to “express themselves.”

The support for this mission reached the student body and resulted in the passing of the five dollar increase student activity fee proposal. This student activity fee, once approved by the Board of Trustees, will allow the student organizations at Oakland to create and sponsor more on-campus events and programs. Looking ahead, this will help us reach our publicized mission in becoming a “student centered” campus as part of the university’s Creating the Future II vision for the year 2020.

According to Student Activities Funding Board Chair Brandon Hanna, whose board reviews funding request for the student organizations here at OU, the number of registered student organizations has increased by over 50 in the past year. This increase allows SAFB to continue to support the number of student organizations financially and allows OU to promote itself.

Another exciting aspect for the coming year is an online network that is a new and revolutionary improvement, positively benefiting every student organization at Oakland University. The new program, dubbed “GrizzOrgs,” will allow student organizations to have a new way to broadcast their message, interact with members and recruit interested OU students who are looking to get involved. It’s like a Facebook for student organizations.

Oakland University Student Congress will launch its GrizzOrgs page early this summer, where we will announce all of our plans for the upcoming year. These plans will include several green initiatives, like going to an entirely paperless office, to hosting campus-wide programs like a PostSecret program, Rock 4 Rights, Middle East Awareness Forum, and a Soccer Tailgate.

You can be sure to have many great events to go to and be more engaged than ever with our new marketing plan, designed to deliver information that you are interested in.

We are looking forward to another great year at OU, where Oakland University Student Congress is already hard at work to deliver you the full “Oakland Experience” you deserve. We don’t envision Oakland University building a school for the students, but the students building up Oakland University.

This is your university, and your say definitely counts… all you need to do is “Express yourself!”