Duke Student Government

Letter from the President

Dear Duke Students,
My name is Heather Raslan, and it is one of my greatest joys to serve as your DSG President for the 2024-25 school year. The vision for my administration is based off the experience of our executive team and what students have shared with us. As such, our goals are focused on improving DSG’s internal infrastructure to allow us to find success in building partnerships with campus organizations and bringing project work that serves students and the community.

Now half-way though the year, I can reflect on the work DSG has done so far towards these goals and what’s left to accomplish in the spring. Internally, we have compiled resources and project tracking for every committee to allow for stronger centralization of progress and sustainability of work from year to year as transitions occur. The implementation of the Committee 101 mentorship program allowed new senators to jump into project work in a structured format to allow introduction to the project process and allow them to understand how DSG operates and their role in its work.

Building community partnership can be difficult to master since the core of our mission is to build sustainable partnership. While leadership teams can meet with other leadership teams, with
every yearly transition progress is lost. Our goals for this year are to not only solidify DSG’s role as a resource to organizations, but to implement a structure that lends to consistent communication regardless of who’s in the executive roles in following years. When creating the Cabinet roles for the year, we implemented a Pratt Affairs position for the first time to ensure consistent project work geared toward Pratt experience and communication with Engineering Student Government. In the fall, we hosted a Multicultural Student Leader Dinner where we were able to introduce DSG’s leadership teams and learn more about our peer leaders on
campus. Looking to the spring, we are hoping to collaborate with the groups we have been meeting with to create a committee oriented to communicating work across these organizations and offer more consistent avenues of partnership.