Allegheny Student Government’s College Committees Council, which makes a comprehensive effort to provide the Allegheny student body with access to students and faculty who are tasked to work on campus-wide administrative committees to resolve issues and make decisions that bring about campus-wide impacts, seeks students to fill positions in its committees.

The ASG chief of staff leads the CCC, which holds biweekly meetings to hear reports from student representatives sitting on six all-college committees: the Academic Standards and Awards Committee, Finance and Facilities Committee, Council on Diversity and Equity, Public Events Committee, Curriculum Committee and Campus Life and Community Standards Committee.

“The CCC is meant to be a collaborative body that allows student voices to be heard in regards to the administration’s decision making,” said ASG Chief of Staff, John Fazio, ’19. “So I would say that the dynamic in play is that students have influence over decisions that the administration makes or at least helps advise them with what the students on the committees feel to be the student opinion.”

Contrary to the multiple facets of ASG’s responsibilities, members of the CCC have a more limited role, focusing on the internal dimensions of administrative decision-making.

“CCCs attract a different kind of a student that ASG would, and I’m grateful for that because we get different perspectives,” said ASG President, Camilla Gomez, ’19. “Sometimes in ASG the same personalities are drawn to elected positions, so it’s good to get some diversity in those positions because mostly they’re filled by students who don’t sit on ASG, which I see as a huge strength of it.”

A lack of public profile, however, does not take away from the important role students on these committees have.

“I think it’s actually a degree closer to working with the administration than even ASG is,” Gomez said. “Like the Academic Standards and Awards Committee, these things are really important as they’re making decisions about academic honors, honor code violations, things like that, that are gonna affect the students day-to-day.”

Students on the committees report to ASG, keeping the organization informed about the decisions made in the committees. This practice also serves to provide the general student body a conduit for information about college governance.

“The CCC really allows me to inform the ASG general assembly of what kind of decisions are being made in the administration at a given time, and then through different avenues, we can disseminate that information to the wider student body,” Fazio said. “So it really helps us embody Allegheny’s commitment to shared governance between ASG and the administration.”

To encourage student participation on the committees and fill open seats, Gomez and Fazio are attempting to raise the profile of the CCC and its member groups.

The CCC is “one of the most significant committees — if not the most significant committee — just in terms of its scope and the kind of influence the students can have,” Fazio said.