The Student Association Congress is creating a new department centered on increasing transparency and communication between the governing body and students.

The “Resolution To Create the Student Association Congress Department of Public Relations,” passed in a Feb. 10 meeting, will establish an official Department of Public Relations within the SA Congress to develop and grow its transparency initiatives. Blake Goldstein, speaker of the SA Congress and a junior majoring in political science, authored the legislation and worked alongside SA Congress members to establish the committee and agree on its impact statement.

In an interview with Pipe Dream, Goldstein shared that his main goal is to maintain transparency as the “core initiative” of the SA Congress.

“One of the biggest problems I think the Student Association has on campus is that no one fully knows what the Student Association is, what we do,” Goldstein said. “There’s a very big disconnect between us and the students that we exist to serve. And so essentially, what this bill does is it forms another department within the Student Association Congress that makes transparency a priority.”

The resolution comes a few months after the legislative body passed a different resolution, also authored by Goldstein, to create a public opinion form for students to share their concerns with the SA Congress. This development came as part of some other “increased transparency initiatives” — including public recordings of SA Congress meetings, creating a new TikTok account and a consistent posting schedule on the SA Instagram — that the body is undertaking to boost student awareness and trust. The SA has also moved its public comment period, which usually takes place at the end of its meetings, to the beginning of its meetings so that clubs that are short on time can still represent themselves.

Over the past two years, a slew of contentious debates and incidents at SA Congress meetings have sparked some controversy among the student body. In October 2024, the SA Congress voted to rescind the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions legislation, which passed earlier that April. During the October meeting, representatives voted to pass five other resolutions, including an amendment that would classify any attempts to undermine the right of Jewish self-determination as antisemitic. The Congress also approved a resolution in support of prohibiting face coverings during protests, which the SA E-Board then vetoed.

In the Spring 2025 semester, SA congressmembers debated whether to amend its Management Policies to allow special committee chairs to cast votes on bills. The resolution passed in April at an emergency meeting, but was vetoed by the E-Board one day later, citing concerns about creating a “power imbalance in the Student Association.”

The Department of Public Relations will be led by Nina Thomas, a member of SA Congress representing Mountainview College and a sophomore double-majoring in political science and economics. To be selected as director, candidates must be nominated by the speaker and confirmed by a three-fourths vote of Congress after the general election of Congress representatives.

The director of public relations is in charge of assigning projects to the committee, editing graphics and doing final-round editing before posts are uploaded to the SA Instagram. The Department as a whole is also working on a new project to spotlight chartered student organizations by sending a public relations liaison to one of their club meetings and posting an Instagram Reel about the experience.

Thomas told Pipe Dream that this initiative can show students how to get involved. She added that clubs interested in connecting with the SA can directly message the SA Congress Instagram, or they can email the speaker of Congress.

A representative from each SA Congress committee — Internal Affairs, Student Life & Academics, Finance Committee, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Elections & Judiciary — will be part of the department, and each committee will choose their representative to serve as a public relations liaison.

Department members will continue brainstorming ideas for new social media content. Brady Lindsay, chair of internal affairs for the SA Congress, a nonvoting sponsor of the resolution and a sophomore majoring in physics, hopes that trust and transparency will continue to be built between the student body and the Student Association through this new plan.

“Instagram is a very available platform for most people,” said Lindsay. “That’s how most people get their information regarding campus anyways. So, if you’re just scrolling, you can see everything that we’re doing.”

The current members of the Public Relations Department are Ezra Rivel, Jenna Rusgo, Jayden Cedano, Muhammad Bhatti and Ryan Eisenstein — all SA congress representatives.

“This resolution really gives members of SA that were already doing a lot of work behind the scenes some recognition, particularly in terms of how the general student body views SA Congress,” said Bhatti, an Apartments Community SA Congress representative, public relations liaison and a freshman majoring in biology, in an interview with Pipe Dream.

While the resolution’s impact statement focuses on improving public transparency, not everyone is convinced the department will accomplish this. Hatim Husainy, a sophomore majoring in political science who represents the Apartments Community in the SA Congress, argued that while the department is a good first step, other important aspects of the SA will likely not be made public on Instagram.

“The Student Association in this past year ran a $150,000 deficit, and the year before that, almost half a million dollars in deficit,” explained Husainy in an interview with Pipe Dream. “Those are the things we should be discussing on these Student Association Instagrams, whether they are for Congress or the E-Board or the Student Association at large. The real issues that we have on campus — I worry, at least — are the ones that are not being discussed in these social medias because they worry people.”