Madison Kwiecinski

News Editor 

MVK5945@psu.edu 

Student Leadership and Involvement sent out an email on April 12 announcing Penn State Behrend’s Student Government Association President and Vice President for the 2022-2023 school year. Congratulations to Matthew Strupzewski, the next SGA President, and Luke Warner, the next SGA Vice President. 

Strup and Warner both dedicated a significant amount of time to campaigning and explaining to the student body why they would be the best candidates to represent the interests of the student body at Behrend, and the hard work paid off. The candidates campaigned across social media posting videos in order to talk directly to the student body and hung out in the student union building to talk directly to members of the student body. 

Strup and Warner had previously run for President and VIce President for the 2021-2022 school year, but lost the election to current SGA President Dylan Free and Vice President Claire Perritano. Strup and Warner’s former campaign came up several times while campaigning, including in the presidential debate, but the candidates spoke well of their former campaign, explaining that is anything it gave them even more experience to get to where they are now. 

“We were able to take the feedback and what we saw last year, build upon our strengths, and fix our shortcomings to smooth out the rough edges. My past year in the Cabinet has allowed me to learn so much more that I am prepared to take on the position now more than ever,” said Matt Strup. 

Strup also stated, “I hope if there is one thing I will be able to do during my Presidency, it is bring back the true life and involvement to this campus.” Warner and Strup advocated their “16-week plan” during the campaign, a tremendous move to bring life back to campus and emphasize student involvement in clubs. Each of the 16 weeks in the semester will have a club or organization sign up to spend the week hosting campus events and advertising their organization. 

Ideally, this will help to get students much more involved and outside of their dorms. Participation rates in campus programming and membership in clubs dropped dramatically during the pandemic, and this plan will help to push the campus forward, surging involvement and moving everyone into an exciting new era following the restrictiveness of the pandemic. 

Students can look forward to seeing the work of Matt Strup and Luke Warner as they work to better the Behrend campus as a whole next year as our SGA elected officials. To conclude, Matt and Luke were asked, if given the chance, what they would like to say to the student body and stated the following: 

“To start, I want to make sure everyone knows we are going to make sure there is a strong focus on communication between our executive board and the students. Next year I want to restart the Presidential Roundtables, where we meet with all of the club President’s on campus on a regular schedule, so we provide an easy and comfortable environment along with access to talk to us. This way, we are able to stay more in the loop on what is happening and what events we can assist in, as well as allow us to hear directly from each specialized group on what their wants, needs, issues, and desires are. The whole point of our organization, and especially our positions, is to represent and advocate for the wants and needs of our students. The first step to doing this is actually listening to what these wants and needs are, to which then we can act.”