It may always get brought up at Student Government Association assembly meetings, but the meeting frequency will not change any time soon.
SGA President Al Carroll said that the idea to move assembly to every other week as opposed to every week like it is now is brought up every year.
“The administration wouldn’t change it because it wouldn’t work,” Carroll said. “Student opinion and votes couldn’t be collected.”
Junior physical education and exercise science major Ariel Rudd said she believes it would be a good idea to change meeting frequency.
“Unfortunately, many SGA representatives don’t report back to their organizations, because a lot of what we cover in assembly is unchanging due to the frequency of the meetings,” she said. “I think more people would come to assembly if it were bi-weekly, and I think they would take the info back to their
organizations.”
However, many clubs and organizations meet
every other week, and if assembly was changed to meet bi-weekly, there would be no way to coordinate with every group, Carroll said during assembly earlier this month.
“It would be difficult because there would be a chance that SGA assembly would meet on the off weeks of these organizations,” sophomore arts administration and public relations major Allie Combs said. “Then the SGA representative would never be able to relay the information from assembly to their constituents, and that is the whole reason assembly exists in the first place.”
Kelsa Reynolds, vice president of operations for SGA, said that any type of business vote discussion would be delayed almost four weeks.
Anything in need of discussing needs to be brought up in advance before actually being discussed, she said, so if assembly was on a bi-weekly schedule, that business may be long forgotten by the time SGA
meets again.
“Considering how fast-paced our society is, for our student government to work at a pace different than the pace of the student body’s lives is inefficient and folly,” sophomore pharmacy major EJ Oldfield said. “Although some weeks this does mean shorter assembly due to a lack of discussion points, SGA is better off staying up-to-date with events on campus rather than being a week behind.”
If it were to change, Reynolds said word about anything going on would not get out, and few people on campus would know about any programming.
“SGA is all about effective communication, and if [assembly meetings] were to change, there would be a huge communication gap,” Reynolds said. “That’s not what SGA is about.”
CPA Chair Mike Tirman, said that members are always brainstorming different ideas on how SGA can be better, but he, with the rest of the executive board, understands that bi-weekly meetings would be a mistake.
“There’s a ton that goes on,” Tirman said. “We have to be careful.
“We have to keep the line of communication open, and assembly is the best way of doing that.”
Many of the SGA representatives agree with the executive board on the idea that it would be the wrong decision to change assembly to every other week.
Reynolds said SGA will be sticking to weekly meetings, and if next year’s officers want to, they can think about changing it next year.
SGA assembly is held every Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Krannert Room.
