Deep in the Club Scene
SA executive board member enriches students' lives
By Melanie De Jesus

Mentoring young girls, building houses for low-income families, volunteering for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and pursuing a bachelor’s degree in communications disorders may seem like more than enough to keep one college student busy, but Debra Bengis, a sophomore at the College of Saint Rose in New York, would disagree. While many students get involved in campus clubs as a way of meeting people, Bengis plays an active role in all 34 of them, serving as the Student Association’s Vice President for Special Interest Groups. It’s no wonder that she claims not to understand people who complain of boredom.

Going beyond her SA executive board duties and those as financial advisor and coordinator for the non-academic groups operating on campus, Bengis attends meetings and events sponsored by all the groups she oversees. She also volunteers as a weekly mentor at an all-girls institute and actively attends every meeting and helps coordinate events for the three associations of which she is an official member.

“I like to do it,” Bengis says. “I find that that’s what makes the college experience that much more exciting—if you take advantage of all these things.”

The oldest of five children and a Girl Scout until her senior year of high school, Bengis revels in keeping busy, using all the determination and leadership skills she learned growing up to manage her hectic schedule and update the position of Vice President for Special Interest Groups. Since taking the position last semester, she’s gone from being a simple financial advisor to a fundamental liaison between student associations on campus and SA.

“I hope to establish those lines of communication so that the students can make the most of it,” Bengis says. “A lot of students just don’t know what’s going on, and I feel like that’s my responsibility to get the word out and make their experience here as great as mine has been.”

Working on the SA’s executive board, Bengis assists in making important budget decisions that affect how the clubs she oversees will manage themselves throughout the year. Although she dislikes limiting what students can or can’t do according to SA’s tight activities funds, Bengis finds that in her current position, she can honestly speak for the student population by effectively sharing her views with the college’s administrators. “That’s not something that every student is lucky enough to do,” she says. “I feel excited to be able to sit down with people who make the decisions and tell them how I feel because I really feel like I speak for a large number of students when I sit down and talk to them.”

Bengis’ favorite job perk is the connections she makes through SA. She feels confident that the skills she learns and the people she meets on a day-to-day basis through the organization will help her achieve her goals. “I feel like they’re going to be good people to have when I go out into the real world; people I can look to for advice and who’ll be there to support me,” Bengis says.

In the future, Bengis hopes that the business skills she applies in her current administrative position will help her in her goal of setting up her own speech or hearing practice. For now, however, she keeps busy as an active member of the Student Events Board which plans week-to-week events on campus; Habitat for Humanities, a non profit association that builds houses for low income families; and the New York State chapter of the Speech Language and Hearing Association, as well as pursuing her hobby as a photographer.

Contact Bengis at bengisd503@strose.edu.

Copyright © 2005 Oxendine Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved