The Student Government Association has made plans to build a new lion statue on campus.

SGA plans to place the statue on the west side in Friendship Circle. Though they have not begun construction yet, they expect to have it built within five years. 

“We’re right now in the process of finding an artist to design the piece,” said 2017-2018 SGA President Seth Leto. “That’s the phase we’re in right now. I don’t have an exact due date, but it will be a little while for us to find the artist and for him to build and construct the piece.”

Leto explained that his idea to have a lion statue on campus has been something he has thought about for a long time.

“It has been an issue for a long time,” said Leto. “It’s been talked about by past administrations. It’s been talked about by some students, and so, it was always something I wanted to do when I ran for president two years ago, and I unfortunately lost, but that was a platform back then as well. Then this year, it was still something that I ran on. So, it’s always been a topic of discussion to me. It’s always been, ‘Why not?’”

Leto discussed the funds behind the lion statue.

“Through SGA capital outlay budget, we have the funds,” said Leto. “Those are through student self-accessed fees, and through that fund, we were able to allocate $50,000 towards the project.”

SGA 2018-2019 President Richard Davis Jr. shared that SGA is also currently looking for investors from other groups associated with the campus.

“We’re looking to get other support, not only verbal support but also financial support from other groups such as the Alumni Association, athletics and things like that,” said Davis. “So, SGA was the initial investor in the actual project.”

When it comes to what the statue will look like, Leto said SGA has an idea, but it’s still in the planning phase.

“In talks, we see it as being set up slightly on some sort of pedestal but not too tall because we still want people to get to it,” said Leto. “So, maybe a step or two just to get to it. We see it being a bronze statue. Then as far as the look, we don’t really want it to look fierce or like it’s fighting, but more so just like, kind of statuesque. Very serious and solemn is kind of the tone of how we’ve been discussing how it will look.” 

Davis explained that SGA wanted to open their artist search to people outside of the university’s alumni.

“The suggestion came up to use an alumni artist, someone who graduated from Southeastern, but we do want to open it up to a broader base and allow other artists who didn’t attend Southeastern just to make it fair and to get an overall diverse design,” said Davis. 

Interim Director of the Office for Student Engagement Angela James also expressed her thoughts on the lion statue.

“I’m very excited that the administration has moved to make this possible,” said James. “It’s been something that I think has been wanted for a very long time.”