After her first year on campus, Torre Payton-Jackson knew almost nothing about Syracuse University’s Student Association — except that it was big, gave away free football tickets and oversaw other student organizations. 

Despite not being familiar with SA, she applied during the summer to join its Public Relations Committee after her friends within SA encouraged her to join.  

Now as co-chair of SA’s Public Relations Committee, Payton-Jackson is spearheading a PR movement with co-chair Peter Choi to make the organization more visible to the student body. 

“If you don’t have that friend inside SA, it’s really hard to know what SA is,” Payton-Jackson said. 

Building SA’s brand is a long-term project. Choi and Payton-Jackson split up the year into two projects that will span each semester. Choi said they spent the fall semester building an “infrastructure of trust” within SA by recruiting new members and externally with the student body by promoting university-wide events. 

Payton-Jackson said the first semester focused on planning for the long-term. The SA assembly has largely planned initiatives that won’t be implemented until the spring semester or the 2019-20 academic year.

Now, she said she wants to start a branding committee. She wants people to “see SA everywhere.” 

In the spring semester, the co-chairs plan to get to what Choi describes as the “heartbeat” of the student body by gauging what students want to see out of their student government.  

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Academic Affairs Committee Chair Ryan Golden, who is a columnist for The Daily Orange, said building a brand has been difficult for SA in the past because the campus community only knows SA for the initiatives the organization puts on. 

“It’s been tough to do (that) without any kind of social media presence, without any kind of real effort being done to promote ourselves,” Golden said.  

At one of the first assembly meetings of the semester in September, 21 new members were elected — a number that Board of Elections and Membership Chair Sophia Faram said doubled the size of the assembly. 

In the following weeks and months Payton-Jackson and Choi found several unused social media accounts for SA. Both said they created consistency in SA’s online presence by making one main account for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 

Payton-Jackson said all of SA’s posts on social media have the same layout. In November, she and Choi unveiled the rough draft of a potential new SA logo to the assembly. The logo got mixed reactions. 

“We shouldn’t be changing our logo to be recognized,” said assembly member Josh Shub-Seltzer, who is a photographer for The Daily Orange, at a Nov. 12 meeting. “We should do more to be recognized.” 

Two weeks later, two new logos were passed by the assembly. The first is the main logo of the organization, and a second was chosen to look more appealing on shirts and merchandise.

“It’s really recognizable,” David Fox, director of technology, said at the Nov. 26 meeting. “It’s modern. It’s different.”  

Choi said SA’s limited presence in the past stems from a lack of effort. The PR chairs used a “variety of avenues” to reach the student body this year, he said. This combines face-to-face interaction with online engagement.  

Multiple members praised the little changes the organization has made about the way it reaches students. By putting polls on SA’s Instagram page, Payton-Jackson has garnered more than a dozen responses regarding topics such as students’ thoughts on the SEM 100 curriculum, speakers the student body wanted to see on campus and whether SA should adopt a new logo.   

A suggestion box outside the SA office in the basement of Schine Student Center has been used to receive student feedback for years. After the box was moved to the main lobby of Schine, the organization has been able to get more responses, SA Vice President Kyle Rosenblum said after an Oct. 29 assembly meeting. SA plans to place four to eight more suggestion boxes around campus next semester. 

Many members of SA discovered the organization through personal connections or from SA leaders reaching out to different clubs. SA President Ghufran Salih decided to run for office after being an orientation leader with former SA President James Franco and Vice President Angie Pati, she said.  

Not knowing what SA was for most of his freshman year, Rosenblum got involved with the Health and Wellness Subcommittee last year after he heard Franco and Pati speak to a student organization he was part of.         

Rosenblum said SA’s biggest accomplishments of the year so far have been internal. SA looked at how to increase its connection to the student body, he said, and for the first time, recognized student organizations can request a liaison from SA to speak with the organization directly. Both Salih and Rosenblum, along with Faram, have made efforts to engage new assembly members by creating new positions within the body.  

But Payton-Jackson said that this semester as a whole was mostly a preparation for coming months.  

“Next semester, we’re going to have a lot more to say and a lot more to do,” she said. “We’re going to actually put our faces around campus, and we’re going to become more of a resource.” 

Published on November 28, 2018 at 11:52 pm

Contact Gabe: [email protected] | @gabestern326