After a year of work on the proposal, the resolution set to restructure student representation on SGA for the first time since 1988 has passed the student referendum needed for any changes to the SGA Constitution, alongside a resolution to create a Co-Chair of Equity and Inclusion on SGA’s Executive Board, addressing a long-standing issue of retention and burn-out for Chairs of DEI.
Despite challenges in meeting quorum, or, the general number of votes needed for an election to be valid, for the ballot– 20% of the student body– the election closed formally the night of Wednesday, April 29.
In the words of the Committee on Student Representation Reformation, the group that worked to form the proposal, “the lack of House Senators elected to General Assembly in recent years had led to a breakdown of communication between SGA and the student body, and issues enforcing information accuracy and transparency.” The proposal is rooted in the observation that “students for many years have been advocating for a change to the structure of SGA, so that it may better represent the student body both accurately and holistically, on multiple levels and in all aspects of the student experience.”
What does this mean for a future SGA? The Executive Board, with the exception of the added DEI Co-Chair, will remain the same, though the student representatives serving under and alongside them are changing. This resolution replaces House Senators with Residential Representatives, who, overseen by the Chair of Residential Affairs, would instead represent students and ResLife staff in the four different housing communities: first-year, cross-year, upperclass, and independent living (or the ‘Village’). To ensure multiple layers of representation for every student, the Chair of Academic Affairs would oversee representatives from the different general academic divisions: STEM, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts. Whole-class-year representation from Class Council will look a bit different as well: the council will consist of a President and Vice President, alongside any appointed representatives they choose to have, who would both attend General Assembly every week, and send out weekly SGA update emails, as current House Senators are expected to.
In the fall, elections for these new positions will commence. Also beginning in the fall, the Committee, alongside all of SGA’s General Assembly, will work with clubs to design a system of club-based representation. Alongside the above positions, one proposed idea from the committee is that all Registered Student Organizations (and, on a voluntary basis, any non-RSO clubs, meaning those that do not receive SGA funding) would send representatives to meet in Club Representative Assemblies, once or twice a month, to discuss campus issues and SGA initiatives with one another, and their respective SGA Chairs. Because the Committee acknowledges that this system takes quite a bit of organizing and feedback, SGA would seek to implement it gradually over the next academic year, with flexibility and in collaboration.
The Co-Chair for the position of Chair of Equity and Inclusion will elect the two candidates with the most votes to the position, who will then share the responsibilities of role, including managing the DEI Committee, the Opportunity and Equity fund, and participating in a multitude of different meetings and events with students, staff, and other members of the campus community.
Disclaimer: The author and editor, Theo Andres, is Chair of the Committee on Student Representation Reformation, which wrote and proposed the resolution on the new SGA system.
