Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) has just launched a new web site after two years of very limited maintenance on the organization’s former web site. Dev Oliver ’04 and MCSG president Simone King ’04 are creating the new site, which is still under construction.

According to Oliver, the primary site designer and technician, it will be several weeks before the links can be connected and officers can begin to post minutes, news and upcoming events.

“The idea of the web site would be to create a web site which would be very interactive one in which students can go to get a variety of information,” King said. “What we’re working on is having a student-alumni network component of the web site, a way in which students can interact with alumni in creating a community within Macalester.”

MCSG’s former site had undoubtedly seen better days. Course evaluations dated back over a year, officers’ names had not been updated from previous years and many of the issues and news stories posted dated back to 2001. Several of the officers listed were members of the class of 2002.

“[The site is] being designed in a way so that anyone can contribute to it,” King said. Currently, the site provides a current list of committee representatives and a few course evaluations with space allocated for news, issues, a list of executive officers, links to the Program Board and contact information. King said she hopes the site will contain other useful links for students.

“There’s a [link to a] site that an alum is currently making which paints a broad and deep picture of the activism at Macalester, to which anyone can contribute information,” she said. “We urge anyone to get involved with that.

“We’re also looking at providing information such as job opportunities [and] how you go about getting a job,” King said. We were looking at [including] information, like how to form a major, what are some of the things that are looked at, what kind of things you would be interested in engaging in, things like that.”

King also said that MCSG was working to be as accessible as possible via the web site. The new web site is just one of several efforts that MCSG has made this year to reach students. New bulletin boards in some of the dorms, such as Turck and Doty, are dedicated solely to providing students with news from MCSG and Legislative Body meetings.

“Just as with the web site, we’re trying to be a lot more visible for students in their space,” MCSG Vice President Damion Rhudd ’04 said of the bulletin boards. He said plans are underway to get similar boards in all of the dorms.

“We’ve always had the problem [that] students see MCSG as administration,” Rhudd said. “We’re trying to put MCSG out there because it is whatever students put into it.... We’re looking for feedback.”

Students had differing levels of participation in and perception of MCSG.

There have been different reasons given by MCSG for the decreased student participation over the past two years. Students had varying opinions about the role and involvement of student government in their lives.

“I think MCSG is doing more with the student lounge,” Charlotte Ridge ’04 said. “[It shows] good leadership from MCSG and I’m impressed. [But] they really are just there to dish out money to organizations. I don’t see what else they can do.”

“I see their banners quite often in the halls, which are their statement of purpose or something,” Emilia Klayn ’05 said. “But other than that, MCSG’s not really part of my life. I don’t really see them or hear them.”

Elana Wolowitz ’04, co-chair of Feminists in Action, said she thought communication between student organizations and MCSG might be improved. “I think they do a good job considering that they have a big amount of organizations to deal with,” she said. “They could do better in terms of making information available when they are not…It still feels like there is a bureaucratic rift between how the organizations operate and how MCSG operates.”

When asked, Liam Bowen ’06 said he had no idea what MSCG was, indicating possible issues concerning the body’s communication and visibility.

Rhudd and King maintain that while the web site had no one designated to maintain it in years past, this did not necessarily represent inactivity on the part of the organization.

“The responsibility of MCSG does not change but the concerns that students possess can vary from year to year,” King said. “Last year MCSG's main goals were the game room, student representation in the tenure process and the Kagin Computer Lab.” All of these goals, according to King, were met.