The Student Government Association of VTSU Castleton recently held its annual retreat to the Sagamore Hotel on Lake George. 

During the three-day retreat, students from the Congress, Court, and Campus Activities Board could bond, go to the local restaurants and an arcade and sit in on their peers’ presentations.

“I learned about being more open to people and maintaining a professional manner,” said general CAB member Phillip Malazarte, when asked about the benefits of the retreat. 

Others from Congress, CAB, and Court also shared what they learned on the retreat. 

“I learned some important stuff about keeping commitment from Matt Patry, and more about leadership styles from Thomas Kehoe, and more about appreciating others in general,” said Zack Durr, the treasurer for SGA. 

Pearl Bellomo, a delegate, talked about one of the presentations that stuck out to her.

“Matt Patry had a great presentation about teamwork and delegating work to others for their improvement as a leader rather than taking all of the work for themselves,” she said.

One of the many presentations during the retreat was one about the upcoming SGA elections and how it will be run this year due to the merger. There is a new constitution in the works and many of the folks on SGA didn’t know that much about it. Luckily, one of the presentations brought it up and discussed it in a more down-to-earth but professional way.

“I learned more about the structure of the new VTSU SGA constitution,” said Kehoe after the ending of the presentation on the new constitution.

There weren’t just presentations, and workshops, however. There was also time for bonding and connecting with other branches of the student government. 

While interviewing some of the members of SGA, many brought up again and again that they all had a blast hanging out with their fellow SGA members and growing a stronger bond with their friends.

“The best part of the retreat was hanging out with all the SGA members and having a blast,” said Thomas Kehoe, the vice president of CAB.

One of the last questions asked to the SGA members was what would you want the general VTSU Castleton community to know about the retreat, and how would you promote it if someone was skeptical about going on it if they were from Congress, court, or CAB?

“What I want the people to know is, yes it’s fun, but we do go through a lot of training. As for people who are skeptical of going, there’s a lot of work but there are fun aspects of it too,” Malazarte said.