Without a senior class president in place, currently nobody is planning or organizing 2019’s senior class trip, begging the question of whether it will happen at all.

“There should still be hope that there will be a senior class trip. At this point, it has to be who’s going to do it,” Central Connecticut’s Student Government Association President Kassandra Fruin said.

The only eligibility requirements for being senior class president, according to the SGA bylaws, is a 2.0 GPA and senior standing. The position’s sole duty is to plan the senior class trip – the individual will no longer be an automatic speaker at commencement since CCSU now looks closely at merit.

But the lack of oversight and guidelines has resulted in previous trips being “not executed in a way a lot of people on the Senate would hope,” Fruin said, so she had planned on introducing new bylaws outlining the position’s responsibilities, reasons for removal from office and other stipulations.

“We lost $20,000 [from last year’s trip and didn’t gain it back],” Fruin emphasized as one explanation behind wanting more direction, citing how 2018’s senior class president struggled to delegate her committee and didn’t sell enough tickets because of poor promotion.

“Last year and in previous years, there’s been a senior class president that hasn’t been effective in advertising and making the events plausible to happen,” former SGA President Brendan Kruh said, adding that a lack of structure, “defined” responsibility and accountability made the event unsuccessful.

However, Fruin and SGA Vice President Dante Solano came to the conclusion that this process would “solidify” the senior class president as an elected position on the Senate, an outcome they did not want. Instead, the two went to Student Activities/Leadership Development Director Scott Hazan last semester – after discovering the Senior Class Committee existed on TheLink – with the proposed bylaws’ language and asked the office to adopt them.

“We decided not to go through with [these new additions] because we don’t want [the senior class president] to be considered a member of the Senate,” Fruin said. “We put it into SA/LD’s hands. Like we’ll facilitate the election for you, we’ll fund the trips, we’ll do everything on that end, but we’d really like the person to follow these guidelines.”

According to both Fruin and Solano, there’s been no approval from SA/LD or any recent follow-up. Without the office’s confirmation, the SGA does not have the authority to facilitate the election for the senior class president.

“They said they liked it, but there hasn’t been a secured ‘yes’ yet,” Solano said, adding that if SA/LD were to approve having the elections, the SGA could move forward with a quick one. “But even at this point, it’s a little bit late.”

Hazan did not wish to comment at this time and directed all questions back to the SGA. And though the Senior Class Committee has been “reregistered and reinstated,” according to its interim chair, Sanil Patel, there are “no specifics yet” and all discussed ideas, including for the trip, first need to be approved.

“Right now, I am trying to get the ball rolling with the programming of these events by getting more seniors interested in joining the committee,” Patel said. “This position does not matter in the long-run as this committee, along with the entire class of 2019, will work together to come up with events and trips. We are just trying to ignite the flame so we can finalize these events as soon as possible.”

Fruin said that the Senior Class Committee would be able to adopt her guidelines if its members wanted to.

Faced with the prospect of having no senior class president and, consequently, no senior class trip, Fruin believes that another organization like the Central Activities Network could plan the trip as an alternative.

“I’m sure our Senate would be open to helping with the funding of it as well because at least with C.A.N., we know that they’re programmers and they know what they’re doing and they’ll be able to actually get students to go,” Fruin said. 

“I genuinely think that if SA/LD thinks it’s too late, C.A.N. will get right on it and they’ll put on a f****** fantastic senior class trip,” she continued.

C.A.N. President Taia Lionetti declined to comment on whether C.A.N. would take the task, explaining that the matter was “uncharted territory” and hadn’t been discussed enough.

But Fruin and Solano, as well as Treasurer Kristina DeVivo, support C.A.N. as the senior class trip’s biggest chance for surviving if the SGA cannot hold elections for a senior class president. Solano hopes that students will be encouraged to push for the trip’s success.

“I was motivated because a student came into the office asking if there was a senior class president and I was like, ‘No, but this is what’s been happening with it, so say something about it,'” Solano stated.

Fruin agreed, expressing that the SGA hasn’t “had much pushback or any passion” from students on the topic because people know that the senior class president doesn’t get to speak at commencement anymore.” If C.A.N. could take on the endeavor, Fruin said that the SGA would consider handing the task over to them permanently and would still provide funding per tradition.

But for now, that’s undecided. The SGA will continue to wait for SA/LD’s response in the meantime.

“We’ve just been waiting. We want the senior class trip to happen,” Fruin said.

Solano corroborated. “We haven’t forgotten about the senior class.”