With the first semester of his term as the president of the Student Government Association coming to a close, President James Orr is already looking to the future.

Some of the things that the SGA has accomplished this semester is the fact that student organizations now each have their own e-mail address. They’ve also done their best to educate the students about the parking situation at UTM.

“We’ve really worked with the university in recruiting minority students,” Orr says. “We want to bring more diversity to this campus.”

Some of the things the SGA has done to accomplish this was hold a flag ceremony earlier in the semester, where different flags from different countries were raised in the University Center, where they are there to stay. This, explains Orr, “is symbolic of everyone working together.”

Other things that SGA has done under the theme of globalization is really push the travel-study program.

“We really wanted to let the students know about the opportunity they have to travel abroad,” says Orr. “We’ve already given out 65 to 70 scholarships already, and plan to add 22 more next semester.” However, that legislation was passed under the previous administration.

Another big plan that SGA has for the Spring semester is to have an internship coordinator. This would be a central coordinator who would work with all of the colleges instead of each department having their own coordinator.

However, some things that Orr had promised while running for the presidency have not come true. He had said that he wanted to e-mail the students about SGA proposals. While they have been using the UTM portal occasionally to poll students, there has not been any e-mails sent out to the students.

Orr also proposed to set up an advisory council, start a mentoring program to bring students fro different backgrounds together, organizing a student success panel and aiding upperclassmen in finding scholarships. “We’ve really been laying the foundations down for a lot of these things this semester,” says Orr. “With the Advisory Council, we wanted to be able to get in touch with the student organizations.” While most of these things have not yet come to pass, Orr promises that they will one day become a reality. “As leaders, sometimes things come up that you have to look at,” says Orr. “In our case, it was the student recreational center ... Things like the Student Success panel and scholarships are important, but you sometimes have to wait so that we can do our best for the students.” One of the biggest plans for the Spring is the student recreation facility, and Orr says SGA is going to stay active throughout the process. Orr also hopes to revive Student Court, which has fallen out of regular use through the years.