SGA Vice President Marilyn Martin will be leaving this morning for Washington, D.C. to represent Oklahoma State University at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. “I tried to cancel my flight so I could stay here because I kind of thought it was more important to be at the memorial service, but Dr. Halligan and Kent Sampson thought that my presence would be even better at the National Prayer Breakfast,” Martin said. “It’s with George W. Bush — I actually contacted them and (the OSU tragedy) should be on the agenda for them to pray about.
“There’s so many people hurting here, and it’s kind of neat that the president will be praying for our school,” she said.
SGA is also doing many things on campus to help heal the hurt.
“The first thing that we did on Saturday was we went over to Bennett and just stayed there for quite a while, just to be available to the students if they needed us to talk too,” Martin said. “ A lot of people look at us as assuming specific jobs, but sometimes we’re just there to listen and that is a huge job description that we have — that’s a lot of what I’ve done this weekend — kind of been here to listen.”
SGA President Vic Wheeler agreed.
“It’s been a couple of days to be a shoulder to lean on and offer some positive leadership,” Wheeler said. “You’d be really amazed by how many people have been affected first hand by this. I met four of (the victims) and knew three of them with some familiarity.”
In more specific tasks, SGA will be serving at the memorial ceremonies.
“I had over 20 of the SGA leaders step up and say, ‘hey, I want to help in some way,’” said SGA Adviser Kent Sampson.
SGA will help pass out pamphlets, greet people as they come in and usher them to their seats.
“We’re just there to make sure things flow a little smoother,” Wheeler said.
Throughout the Big 12, student government groups have contacted SGA to offer their condolences.
“The University of Texas is bringing up a big plywood card they had signed,” Wheeler said.
SGA already has some preliminary plans for a more permanent way to honor the plane crash victims.
“We do have plans to come up with some sort of memorial — we haven’t gotten too deep into all we’re going to do right now,” Wheeler said. “We’re just trying to help each other get through it.”
Sampson said he believes a more permanent memorial will be established soon.
“Although they won’t decide, I think SGA will be very involved — I know they have some ideas and some suggestions on what to do,” he said. “They will be receiving memorial bricks in the formal garden.”
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