By Staff Report

The gavel bangs and Student Government Association members scurry to their seats. It’s Tuesday night and another meeting of the SGA student senate has begun.

The meeting will see reports from the top four executive officers, possibly an outside speaker and perhaps a student will take advantage of the time at the beginning of each meeting where a non-senator can speak for ten minutes about an important issue.
Unlikely, considering how few students seem to attend.

In a poll conducted among 152 University of Louisville students, The Louisville Cardinal found that 132 had never been to an SGA senate meeting. SGA voter turnout last year reflected about 10 percent of the student population, when Michael Anthony, a former SGA adviser and affiliate of the American Student Government Association, said that 25 percent is the minimum that should be desired for voter turnout in student government elections.

SGA has also seen its own general funds budget go from $230,000 in the 2006-2007 school year to $122,000 for the 2008-2009 school year. With another tuition hike anticipated and the meal plan controversy still in full form, some students and administrators have begun to question SGA’s effectiveness in several different areas.

Senate meetings

SGA Supreme Court Justice Tim Brauch said that the current SGA senate meetings differ greatly from those of four years ago under then President Ryan Mckinley, which he feels were longer but more productive.

He cited as an example a meeting that took place after the announcement of the new arena to be built downtown, and the Senate took five hours to listen to each student who wanted to speak about it.

“It was nice because everyone was heard,” Brauch said. “It seems that since then, we have moved away from that, so now the senate focuses a lot more on student senate issues.”

SGA President Rudy Spencer acknowledged that there is often a lot of dead space in Senate meetings.

“There are times in the Senate meetings where I have to ask ‘why are we talking about this?'” said Spencer. 

Brauch said the senate meetings have become more agenda driven, and therefore less substantive.

“They set the agenda and get through it efficiently, but the question is what did we accomplish?” Brauch asked. “The meetings run quicker now, but they are losing some of their student advocacy at this point.”

Brauch and Spencer both suggested a number of different things to improve the meetings. Spencer suggested adding more guest speakers to the agenda. Brauch suggested that a senate meeting be held each month where no new business was discussed, but students could come and voice their concerns in an open forum setting. 
Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Thomas Jackson said the involvement of senators in the overall scheme can also be a challenge.

“Some of the senators aren’t nearly as invested in their roles as the Top Four,” Jackson said. “We still have issues about how senators reach out to their constituency and how councils and [Recognized Student Organizations] reach out to their fray. That will continue to be a challenge.”

Spencer echoed this, saying that there aren’t many disagreements between branches in the SGA.

“If we disagreed more, we would have better ideas,” Spencer said.

Student Involvement

Brauch said that he thinks one of the biggest problems that SGA encounters is that of soliciting student input and involving them in the issues. He said SGA will too often gather input from people that they see or know who have the same opinion as they do.
“They do ask people, but the people that they ask are often the super-involved people who are always around,” Brauch said. “So their opinions are probably different from the commuter student who is taking only night classes.”

Sophomore communication major Rebekah Ryherd said that one issue with student involvement is SGA’s advertising.

“Many students don’t know how to get involved or informed,” Ryherd said. 
Senate speaker Anna Ramsay acknowledged that student involvement is a problem with SGA and pointed to the “Meet Your SGA” event, held on November 19, as something they hope will bridge the gap in communication.

“We had over 600 people at that event,” Ramsay said. “I got to talk to a lot of students about the communication issue, which is one thing that I really feel like we need to improve on.”

Anthony said that regular systemic input from students was something really missing from SGA.

“That is one thing that, over time, they are going to have to start doing better,” said Anthony, who is director of the Cultural Center at U of L. “I don’t think they push student government as well as they do something like a campaign.”

Elections

Spencer said he was disappointed by the low turnout for elections this past year, and emphasized that SGA elections are one of the only ways to make changes happen.
“Students will go on complaining to their individual RSO or council, but they aren’t talking to the right people,” Spencer said. “The right people are their elected leaders.”
Jackson said that SGA does a good job of informing students about issues, and that students can be very discriminant about what they choose to listen to.
“There is a good majority that don’t care about a certain issue,” Jackson said. “We are seeing choices made by students on what they want to engage in.”
Regardless of Jackson’s optimism, Anthony believes that SGA needs to do more to ensure a greater voter turnout.

“It should be a major issue every year for the entire administration of the student government for voter turnout to be higher,” Anthony said. “You have to work harder to get people out there and do more, always do more.”