It’s already that time of the spring semester where Bloomsburg University’s Community Government Association (CGA) members are running for elections for the 2018-2019 academic school year. This year Joar F. Dahn (CGA current president) will be running for re-election with his running mate Amayir Capers as Vice president. (CGA current VP) Dahn and Capers will be running against William Turner and Owen Burg and voting will begin on March 7th and end at midnight on March 8th.
Turner is a junior at BU and is majoring in Criminal Justice with a minor in American Sign Language. He was appointed by Dahn as the Executive Parliamentarian for the 2017-2018 in CGA and is ready to run for president to meet these specific goals: “As a team we will embody, promote, fulfill and establish more diversity in not only race or skin color but in ideals, thoughts, feelings, and progression for all students on/off of campus” said Turner,“We will collaborate more with the Town of Bloomsburg on racial issues, involvement, unity, and overall university and Town-Gown strengthening for all students at the BU institution and abroad.”Turner would also like to work with Greek life to “promote Greek life in positive manner.”
“We will work in collaboration/unity with Greek life students to promote and brand Bloomsburg Greek life in a positive manner and establish a permanent positive progression and representation for all student body members involved in Greek life or contemplating Greek Life,” said Turner, “As a team we will develop more internationally centered efforts and strive not only to better our international program or the study abroad/educational programs but to build them and develop a stronger program on the Bloomsburg campus and across the PASSHE system as a unified front on this topic.”
Turner stated that he wants to run for president because of change. “There’s so much change I would like to see that I know I can do,” said Turner. “I see change in everything I want to do. I want to work with past CGA presidents to bring forward change in our university and town. I want to bring more to this campus than ever before and try to improve our campus to the best of our ability.
My goal is to figure out how we can improve BU for our students, to develop a better place, a better community for huskies, for all students alike.” Dahn had an eventual year as CGA’s president and is ready to accomplish some “unfinished business.” His agenda includes visiting high schools in the inner city of Philadelphia over spring break and throughout the year. “We want to let students know how much we embrace diversity in Bloomsburg University,” said Dahn. Both Dahn and Capers want to provide buses to bring students from their city to come to BU. “We want to them to have this resource because many parents cannot afford to take their kids to college visits.
Bloomsburg was the only campus I visited because of the support from my wrestling coach. If it wasn’t for that, I would not be here. We were talking to legislators in Harrisburg about the state budget and they told us that BU’s enrollment rate keeps dropping and they do not feel the need to give us more money. We believe this will help increase that,” said Dahn. On February 16th, CGA and ASA (African Student Association) hosted a dialogue about racism in the Bloomsburg community called ‘Beyond the Fountain’. Dahn is the president of both organizations and believes it is important to continue ‘Beyond the Fountain’ as a tradition on BU campus because “it was such a positive and successful event.” “We’re planning on having a task force to follow up from Beyond the Fountain,” said Caspers. “The issue with race needs constant attention, it’s not something we just talk about for one day.” “Casper is the founder, president and head coach of the Husky boxing club and was a 2015 Pennsylvanian golden glove champion and I was a junior Olympian so we both are hard workers,” said Dahn. Dahn wants to continue on working on projects outside of Bloomsburg University as well.
The executive board has already adopted an elementary school in Liberia and wants to have all students involved.“We are community service based and this is a project that I would like to see if I can get the whole state involved as well,” said Dahn. Dahn wants to continue branching CGA in the direction that it is going. “Our executive board and senate has been more diverse than it’s ever been,” said Dahn. “CGA is very well respected now because of how well we maintained our professionalism.
Students are now very interested in joining.”Dahn wants to continue on his vision with the help from Caspers as they team up together as the “Good Brothers” if he wins this election. “We work for the students,” said Dahn. “Any concern that a student brings to us, will be addressed and taken care of.” Dahn and Caspers also have Brianna Vera and Sita Cheriff running for Secretary and Treasurer and want students to vote for them as a write-in because they will not be on the ballot. Elections will continue until March 8th at midnight and students can vote online at https://eballot4.votenet.com/bloomsburg