Last semester, Bakersfield College elected its new Student Government Association president in Matt Frazer, 27, a political science major who is looking to make significant strides in student involvement.

Frazer is looking to increase involvement at BC across the board, but a special focus on the ASL club and Deaf community has been at the core of his agenda since his campaign in the spring.

“We have a lot of underutilized groups here who don’t get recognized,” said Frazer. “It’s hard especially for a deaf student to get involved here, because if they don’t have a translator or someone who knows ASL, it’s hard to get involved, because they can’t communicate.”

Frazer is looking for new ways to get the ASL and Deaf community involved in more clubs and activities than just ASL. “There’s a lot of deaf students who want to be engineers and stuff like that, but they have difficulties participating,” he said.

Another big goal for Frazer is to put on more fun activities than BC has seen in years. “We’re trying to do as much as we can. It does get kind of boring and mundane going to the same classes and doing the same thing every day.”

Some of the events he and the rest of SGA are planning range from a pizza fest, Halloween ball (with a haunted house included), a Pokémon GO tournament and even a Quidditch match later this semester. “Our homecoming is also going to be really big this year. We have big events planned every week,” Frazer added.

As the year progresses, Frazer said that the SGA will be asking students what kind of events they want to see and use this to guide them.

“My job is to make sure there are no problems and that students are represented correctly, and that I can go to president [Sonya] Christian and say, ‘this is what we have to work on,’” he said.

Frazer touched on the SGA of the past and the fresh start that the program received two years ago.

“We kind of had an issue with SGA, so we threw it away and started all over with a new SGA,” Frazer said.

“We needed something to happen on campus. And I thought ‘Why not me? Why can’t I make that difference?’ and that’s what made me want to run,” he said.

The biggest challenge that Frazer has already faced in his early presidency is the common problem of finances. “I knew it was an issue, not having much money as a part of SGA, but it really does make things really really complicated to make sure you get things done that you want to get done,” he said.

Frazer emphasized how important it is to SGA that students buy the KVC sticker. “This year we’ve been really blessed, and students have been buying it more than they ever have,” he said.

The KVC sticker, a $15 fee which provides discounts at BC’s on-campus stores, represents 100 percent of SGA’s usable income.

Frazer is already having fun with the job, though the time commitment being SGA president demands has taken some getting used to.

“SGA probably gets 80 percent of my time, and the other twenty percent is split between classes, homework, my wife, and family,” Frazer said. “Without the staff I have, I would be nowhere. We have amazing officers that make my job easy and make me look good,” he added with a laugh.