RSG receives regional honors at conference


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This weekend, USC’s Residential Student Government received regional honors at the Pacific Affiliate of the National Association of College and University Residence Halls (PACURH) Fall Conference hosted at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. To earn these regional awards, USC’s delegation competed with programs from nearly 70 other West Coast colleges and universities, some from as far away as Alaska and Canada. This year’s conference theme was Life in the Fishbowl: Waves of Change, Oceans of Opportunity.

USC’s delegation was led by RSG President Sera Choi, National Communications Coordinator Tina Tzeng and USC’s National Residence Hall Honorary President Michael Tong. Choi, Tzeng and Tong coordinated the delegation’s preparation of recognition bids and guided freshman RSG representatives who participated in the conference for the first time.

RSG’s annual Spirits at Troy event was selected from the 70 schools participating as the Regional PACURH Program of the Year. The program will now be sent to the National Association of College and University Residence Halls for review.

For the past 20 years, Spirits at Troy has been a signature event for the USC community. RSG’s annual Spirits at Troy has provided community members and their children with a safe environment to celebrate Halloween trick-or-treating. RSG invites student organizations to contribute recreational and educational activities for the children to enjoy while they are on campus.

This October, more than 450 community members and their families participated in the campus event. Forty USC student organizations contributed to the planning and execution of this year’s Spirits at Troy, and nearly half of them were residential organizations, overseen by Residential Student Government.

At the PACURH conference, university delegations participated in spirit competitions, philanthropy activities and other programming related to social justice, sustainability, health and leadership.

USC’s delegation also won regional awards for the First Place Digital Banner and the Second Place Roll Call Video.

Tzeng was in charge of preparing the delegation of freshmen for the PACURH conference. Tzeng was awarded with the “Golden Frog Pin Award,” given by the PACURH region directors for her outstanding contributions to the program.

“Throughout my college career, I’ve always heard about the bond of Trojan Family, but nothing truly fit my definition of a family until I joined RSG,” Tzeng said. “Our delegation has become a small, tight-knit family within the larger university community … We highlight each other’s strengths and build upon one another’s weaknesses.”