“What does student senate even do?” If I had a penny for every time I heard that question…

The simple answer is “a lot more than you know.” We just aren’t great at taking credit for it. But that’s a conversation for another day. For those of you who ask the question and really do want to know what senate does, here’s what we’ve been up to this year:

The current executive team ran on a platform that the first portion of our administration would be internally focused, centered around streamlining senate’s processes and realigning its major goals, projects and initiatives to occupy the “sweet spot” where the general direction of the college and the needs of the student body intersect: Refocus (internally). Reconnect (externally). React (organically).

Those weren’t words we put on our posters just to take up dead space. Those were, and still are, words that describe what we believe senate needs to take it to the next level. We asked you to trust us. You did.

We’ve kept our promise. Here’s what “the refocusing of senate” has looked like. The first thing I did as senate president was meet with President Le Roy to find out what his priorities would be for this year.

He told me he would be steering the college towards focusing on renewing our physical spaces through the campus master-planning process and towards engaging in conversations around the revision of the core curriculum and the drafting of the educational framework, conversations which will swing into top gear later this semester.

Consequently, we’ve oriented the bulk of the work we will achieve this year around those two broad topics. However, we’ve also refocused our efforts around student need. So far we’ve received over 85 ideas and proposals through our new proposal process from within and without our organization. Even though we haven’t acted on all of them, we’ve responded to all of them.

Naturally, we’ve held on to the standouts. Additionally, we are staying away from roles that other student orgs and offices can fulfill, though we remain committed to partnering where reasonable. We have also just adopted a new structure that makes our organization more horizontal — it decentralizes decision-making, increases our accountability and synergy, and ultimately has boosted our efficiency and productivity.

Our senate is refocused. We are ready to reconnect.

This year, I’ve had the privilege of working with 14 other individuals committed to mending the chasm between student senate and the student body. The funny thing is that this group isn’t different from any of the other senates that have existed in the three-and-half years I’ve been at Calvin.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some missteps. To be honest, we’ve already had a few of our own, but what organization doesn’t? Student senate has just had to constantly fight the narrative that says we can’t do much — a narrative that is false and propagated by many who don’t do much for the advancement of our college either, let’s be honest.

We dare you to test us. Beautiful things can happen if you do.

On Sept. 30 last year, at the very beginning of senate’s annual Proposal Week, Rachel Mack, a sophomore at Calvin College, submitted a proposal that read, verbatim, “I think that we should have more lounge areas/couches in the library.”

Two weeks later, after student senate ranked the 70 proposals that we received from the student body by their strategic value, timeliness and scope (how deeply and widely they could benefit the student body), senate’s vice president of representation emailed Rachel to tell her that her proposal had been adopted and would be moving forward as one of our potential initiatives this year, especially as it addressed student need within the context of the renewal of physical space, a major goal of the campus master plan project.

Two weeks later, when asked through one of our surveys to rank what changes you (the student body) would make to the Hekman Library, you aggregately ranked Rachel’s suggestion for more comfortable seating first, prioritizing it even over a coffee-house style presence and Sunday hours.

You asked. We responded. Your response snowballed into meetings with the provost, the director of the library, the library’s User Experience Committee and the physical plant’s assistant director of design.

It snowballed into drafting proposals for funds, countless email updates, trips to furniture outlets, slightly awkward price reduction requests, lots of cost-benefit analyses and moving a shelf in the library. The time, energy and planning that it took to bring this idea to real life was massive; it was also entirely volunteered.

Rachel is studying abroad in Spain this semester, so unfortunately she can’t see the comfortable seating area until she returns next school year. However, I was able to send her some pictures that showed how her idea had become reality. That’s the beauty of who we are and what we do. That’s the bridge we can be and the kind of positive change we can create.

But it all started with a student, four months ago, who refused to believe the narrative that student senate couldn’t do much. What would it look like for it to start with you?