After months of uncertainty about whether the senior class trip will have anyone to spearhead it, let alone make it come to fruition, a Senior Class Committee has been officially formed to finally address its planning and organization.

“There is a Senior Class Committee that will be pursuing the programming of at least one or two major events/trips for seniors!” an email sent to students last Wednesday from Central Connecticut’s Student Government Association read.

The problems with previous senior class trips’ developments were a lack of oversight and guidance, as well as monetary mishandling and poor promotion. Trips from past years had “not [been] executed in a way a lot of people on the Senate would hope,” according to SGA President Kassandra Fruin, and had cost the SGA an estimated $20,000 that they did not gain back.

To address these concerns, Fruin submitted suggested guidelines outlining responsibilities, reasons for removal from office and other stipulations to Student Activities/Leadership Development Director Scott Hazan last semester after she and SGA Vice President Dante Solano discovered the Senior Class Committee existed on TheLink. They asked for the guidelines to be adopted by the committee, but were met with a waiting game.

However, now that the Senior Class Committee has been formally announced, Fruin said that the SGA is ready to work with its members to make sure the senior class trip runs smoothly.

“[The] SGA will fund the trips as long as the group works with [SGA Treasurer] Kristina DeVivo and Scott Hazan on a responsible request,” Fruin said. “Not sure what the trips are looking like yet especially since there hasn’t been a meeting yet – once the groups meet, we will have a better understanding on what will happen.”

According to the Senior Class Committee’s Interim Chair Bitu Patel, the committee will “decide on the date of the trip(s), the planning of the itinerary and everything else that comes with programming the event.” The committee will first need to vote on a president, treasurer and budget once it decides on an event, he added.

“Currently, we have compiled a list of events that the seniors would like to see. We will vote on which ones the seniors would enjoy, and what will be the most cost-effective. These ideas range from brewery nights, bar crawls [and] casino trips, all the way to a dinner cruise on the Connecticut River,” Patel stated, stressing that “none of these ideas have been voted on or approved yet.”

Patel said that the committee currently has “38 dedicated seniors.” Every person “has the responsibility and ability to vote on senior trips and events with no personal bias,” he continued, “to ensure that the entire senior class benefits from these trips and events, not a singular person or group of people.” Both he and Fruin are trying to get more seniors to participate.

In regards to SGA grievances on cost and poor advertisement, Patel said that the committee would make sure to be “cost-effective and cost-efficient with these events” and would “gauge senior interest when coming up with attendance projections to the best of our ability,” as well as would “address any concerns [the SGA] might have had in the past and do our best to improve the programming process.”

“When it comes to guidelines, we are abiding by what has been given to us. This is to make sure all decisions made are done in a fair way,” Patel said. “Our relation to SGA is that we are operating under their guidelines given to us and they will be funding the trips according to our proposed budget. Our relation to SA/LD is that we are provided a program and activities advisor to help us through the process.”

“This committee is a positive sign for the senior class trips,” he went on. “We are here, as seniors, to plan events for seniors.”