URG Table by Ana Martinez Chamorro-The Towerlight

If you’re a resident on campus, you may already be familiar with Towson’s University Residence Government that makes up the governing body of the residence halls on campus.

URG members fill the positions of residence hall building councils and aim to host programs throughout the year, enhance community centers, divvy out supplies and try to be a voice for residents.

“Our initiatives include promoting diversity, increasing school spirit, green initiatives, promoting URG, and advocating to residents to our fullest capability,” Matt Sikorski, president of URG, said.

With a new URG executive board taking charge, several events and initiatives are in store to make changes that they hope will benefit residents. Programming and advocacy are two of their main goals.

“Our main [goal] is to build community within the residence halls through our programming as well as the building council,” Sikorski said.

Building council is one of the first steps many of them take for leadership opportunities to meet different leaders and administrators and gain higher positions on campus. According to Chris Guzman, director of special projects, he found being a part of URG is a great way to meet people, get involved and still have fun connecting with people.

“We try to program for everyone. One of our initiatives this year is to start including diversity by cooperating with other groups on campus to program even better,” Guzman said.

URG’s texting service has just started up as one initiative this year. This allows residents to text concerns or issues they are having. It is also a tool that URG executives are using to announce events on campus. So far approximately 120 people are signed up and it has already made an impact.

One text was sent out about “The Price is Right” event and it drew a crowd of about 400 people. The 72-hour film festival last year also opened up to commuters being involved in URG events.

“We’re really looking for bigger scale goals and we can reach those through our individual programming,” Sikorski said.

Another initiative for URG is to increase school spirit. Sikorski said this year; they will be keeping track of residents that attend Towson’s football games and tracking the percentages from each residence hall. The winning building will have a huge party thrown for them, which will include raffles and free prizes.

Mark Droter, director of recognition, said he tries to keep up this school spirit and positive energy by looking for opportunities to get residents recognized for their achievements. “Of The Months” allow students to submit their OTM for someone they think deserves this type of recognition.

“He’s the glue that holds our executive board together because he is always the positive one and that’s something you really need,” Guzman said of Droter.

Sikorski said anyone could be involved in URG by attending the general assembly meetings held every Tuesday in the Chesapeake Room I, 7 – 9 p.m., to voice input or concerns to the board, or discuss the programs. They want to make sure residents are being included in as much as they can in order to benefit their riences on campus.

“We have a lot of deep rooted traditions and we’re really starting to bring them back as well as start our own,” Sikorski said.

Article originally published in The Towerlight