Meet the New Chair of Senate

By Summer Tyler

Meet Jasper Biski, a sophomore political science major and the new Purchase Student Government Association (PSGA) Chair of Senate for the fall 2025 semester.

Jasper Biski smiling inside the PSGA Conference Room. (Photo by Alex Del Cueto)

Biski highlighted the importance of leadership within the PSGA and how students should be eager to get involved. While witnessing a PSGA presidential debate last semester, Biski recognized a disorderly atmosphere and thought he should get more involved. Biski has been a part of the PSGA since last semester and hopes to bring about substantial change within the Purchase community as he takes on this new role.

Biski (left) working alongside Nellie Duggan-Haas (right) during an e-board meeting. (Photo by Alex Del Cueto)

What made you want to join the PSGA?

"I've been a senator since last semester. I joined the Senate because I witnessed a Presidential Debate. I wanted to join and keep watching, and I wanted to help make everything a little more organized. I was in the Senate…The Chair of Senate told me he wasn't going to do it anymore, so I decided that I would run. I ran uncontested, so there was no chance of losing."

What was the election and campaigning process like?

"I made some posters, I put them up in every building I could, and posted on my story. I feel like campaigning isn't really that complicated when social media exists now. The elections were not very publicized though which was kind of sad, posters didn't go up for the general elections until I think a few days into the actual voting timeline, they're doing the same thing with these emergency elections; no one ran for Vice President and no one ran for General programming Coordinator (GPC). Those are pretty important because the GPC helps with The Stood and the Vice President deals with all of the services on campus as well as HR [Human Resources]. The publicity is a little lackluster for the elections and so I feel like the PSGA is kind of this underground thing, it's not so well known."

What does your position entail?

"I oversee all of the senators. I'm part of the E-board [Exectivie board]. I can't vote in Senate resolutions, but I'm able to put forward them. My job is really just to maintain conversation within the Senate meetings that happen every week, I have to manage that, make sure that I set the schedule for the meeting. We go through executive reports, unfinished business, new business, open forum, things like that. I'm basically mediating and I feel like I could do that rather than leading the entire student body. It's more so making sure we get done what we need to get done during these meetings. I feel like there's a lot of 'We should do this' or 'We should propose this' and everyone thinks it's a great idea, and then nothing happens after that, not really. I wanted to crack down on that and make sure that what we say we want to be done actually gets done and in time. Sometimes, these things take semesters to complete."

What's happening in the Senate now?

"There's this whole issue with transfer students not getting the correct credits when they transfer in, and so students will have to stay here for an additional year without financial support, so it's an additional like $30,000 for a mistake on the school's part, not the students part. So that's a big mistake. There's more to it than just a mistake. It might be the college trying to keep kids here for numbers, basically, like getting more money… It's mostly to boost the college's stats. We're having a town hall on that [held on April 3], and that's good because I feel like that's the first time there's really been a strong initiative as of late for change within the community. It'll hopefully unite a bunch of students as well."

Biski looking over at e-board notes inside the PSGA Conference Room. (Alex Del Cueto)

What do you want to accomplish for next semester? What are your main goals?

"I feel like the student body, in general, is pretty divided constantly. When I'm Chair of Senate next semester, I'd like to hold more town meetings so that everyone can come together and collaborate. I feel that at town halls and senate meetings, people just come to vent and to complain. So then it's just like, 'Okay, I'm sorry that all this is happening, now what?' and then they're just like, 'That's your job.' That's not really true; you have to come to us with proposals and things like that. So I want to help push for more collaborative work within the student body, and that's why I think I would be fit to lead the Senate."

"I'm also gonna be starting a committee to help edit the school constitution and the by-laws because they kind of contradict each other, and they're not up to date. There's even sections in the constitution where it's obviously drafted and not finalized. I just kind of want to work on refining everything so that way everything is a lot more orderly, and there's a process and a routine as opposed to constant scrambling, which is how it feels now, especially with all these people stepping down and stuff. I think we've lost three or four E-board members in the past two semesters randomly and we've all had to scramble to fill their seats. It just kind of shows a lack of commitment to the PSGA from like on it, so I just want people to be more committed."

How could students involved with the PSGA work more efficiently?

"I think if everyone stops taking criticism personally, like if someone messes up in their job or makes a little mistake that might be hindering our process of efficient outcomes, people kind of get offended by that really personally. I think we need to have a more open-minded environment where people aren't so harshly criticized all the time."

Why is it important for people to vote?

"We all together can work to change what we think is wrong with our student life. The student body has so much power, and we don't really use it. I think if students just sit there and talk about what's wrong instead of figuring out how to fix what's wrong, we're not gonna get anywhere. But if we do work together and collaborate and share ideas, and keep an open mind, and not take sides immediately and create factions within the student body, I think we could establish a lot of good change, and quickly as well. It would just be better for everyone else that comes to Purchase in the future and for us going here now."

When are Emergency Elections Happening?

"They're happening right now; people should vote. There's only one person running for each spot. I know that the results will at least be revealed by April 10 if all goes according to schedule. It's on Pantherlink."

How can students get involved?

"Orion, the current Chair of Senate, he's great. He's making a new thing where if you want to be a senator, you just come in and be interviewed, and then we decide as a Senate whether you should be on or not. The current way to do it is during election season; someone has to run for senator, get 50 signatures, and then get voted in, which is really lengthy, and so it makes it extremely hard to get senators. I think we have 13 out of 24 seats occupied. So what Orion wants to do is he wants any student to be able to join the Senate at any time, and hopefully, it'll be quick so that we get more senators because we really do not have a lot. Even though there are 13 occupied seats, only six or seven show up every week, so I think we just need to strive for more participation."