The University of Alabama’s Student Government Association recapped summer events and discussed upcoming initiatives at its first executive council meeting Monday evening in the Ferguson Student Center.

Executive Vice President Will Pylant said the campaign he was most excited about working on this year was Campus Connect, a program that began a few years ago to help student organizations know the various tools SGA has in place for them.

“We send speakers from SGA exec to go to student organization meetings and inform them of what they need to be aware of, like FAC funding,” Pylant said.

On the subject of Financial Affairs Committee funding – the SGA program that offers financial aid to student organizations – Vice President of Financial Affairs Chris Willis said the group has nearly $60,000 to allocate at its next two meetings this fall since the SGA’s fiscal year does not renew until Oct. 1.

“We really want to use as much of this money as possible because what we don’t use does not automatically transfer back into our account, and that’s unfortunate,” he said.

Willis also said the planned expenses of the SGA for fall 2013 were approximately $19,651 and the group has $20,000 in actual liquid assets.

Chief Justice Benjamin Sleight, who is in charge of handling student football ticket appeals, said last year the group saw about 800 to 900 appeals, but with all of the changes made this year to the ticketing system, the group will probably see more than 1,200 appeals.

“To deal with this increase, I’ve assigned another justice,” Sleight said. “And appeal time [is] also being reduced from four minutes to less than one, so that’s good.”

Vice President of Student Affairs Hamilton Bloom said there is a new initiative his group will look into this year called McKay Meters Parking, an effort that would attempt to make parking more efficient on certain areas of campus.

“This program would provide more 30 minute parking slots and then students could pay for 30 more minutes through a machine,” Bloom said. “This would help in high traffic areas like the Ferg for people who are just looking to grab a Starbucks.”

Bloom also said he was in the process of putting together a Know Your Rights with Police event for students this fall.

“The idea is that students could come to the Ferg for a free seminar explaining their rights with police officers,” Bloom said. “Because a lot of people don’t know what their rights are.”

Vice President for External Affairs Parker Graham also said there is an initiative his team was beginning to work on for the fall semester, tentatively named Capstone Campaigners.

“With election season coming up, politicians want help and several students want help getting their foot in the door,” Graham said. “We want to gather a pool of students and distribute them throughout the city to local legislators and maybe we can even get them involved as interns on campaigns.”

Carolyn Fulmer, the SGA’s office manager and program assistant, also addressed the group’s soon departure from the Ferguson Student Center due to various construction projects.

“We were originally scheduled to move out of the Ferg in December, but now it’s bumped back to the first week in March,” Fulmer said.