By Billy S. Garland
Recently SGA President OJ Oleka sat down with the Cardinal for a one-on-one talk about issues ranging from government spending to the smoking ban. What follows is a brief version of that interview.
Q: So how was the recent trip to the American Student Government Conference?
A: The Washington D.C. experience was great. We actually went up there a day early to meet with several national senators to talk about things like higher education and healthcare – not to lobby for anything in particular…but it was good because we were able to show that students are actively engaging in what is going on.
As for the conference, the conference is good, it is; but I made the comparison that getting a bunch of student governments together to teach them how to govern is like getting a bunch of nations together to teach them how to govern. It’s fine for developing nations, but for nations who already know what they’re doing it can become rather tedious. In the end we decided that we like the idea of a leadership conference, that makes a lot of sense, but I think what we’ll do [in the future] is spend that money to send younger student government members to leadership conferences that will teach them how to effectively govern.
Q: How expensive was the trip?
A: Well in the future I think we will use the money on a different conference other that the ASGA – or not go at all. The plane tickets were rather pricy. What we tried to do was use the leftover funds leftover from last year. We took over in May, but the fiscal year doesn’t end until June. What we did to make sure we didn’t spend any money out of this year’s budget was we signed up early. We are trying to be fiscally responsible, not to spend money frivolously.
Q: Is SGA getting a lot of flack over the smoking ban?
A: Yeah, well here’s the thing with the smoking ban, SGA didn’t come up with it. It’s like abortion, I mean honestly on this campus, either some people love it or they hate it. When I thought about it I realized it’s not about my personal preferences. I think there are some things where you need to pick a side on. There are certain things where you can say that all students will be harmed by this, so student government is opposed to this. Then there are some things where a large portion of the people who ask me to represent them are in favor of, so we’ll be for it.
What we have decided, to advocate for the student body, is that we can only support this if the transition to this is as easy as possible. Easy means resources for students trying to quit, reasonable enforcement policy, inclusion in where the designated areas will go and how long these areas will exist. For now they will be there until June. You can say that you can’t ride the fence forever but I don’t think we are riding the fence.
Q: Do you think that so far you have been able to fulfill the promises you made to your constituent during the campaign?
A: Yes, I think so. The main promise that our SGA wanted to do was communication. This ‘tell your SGA program’ allows us to go into these meetings with the Provost and say, ‘this is what students are saying right now.’ This has been tremendous for coming up with solutions. We had a meeting the other day about safety, and because of that meeting we can then turn around and tell students, ‘this is what’s happening right now.’ It is real time communication, which I think is unprecedented in comparison to what we have been able to do before.
Q: At the end of the year, if a student were to come to you and ask for an itemized receipt for what their money had gotten them from SGA, what would that receipt look like the way you are going right now?
A: What is the student dollar getting them from SGA? Well I would say that it is getting them adequate representation from their student government. Services that we provide, but more importantly the services we advocate for, and what we can stop from happening. This may be kind of hard to swallow, but it is kind of on good faith, you say, “I am giving my student government my money to work for me and help me.” It really gets into the old philosophical debate of what is government. I think in its purest form, government should exist to protect individual rights. We are working toward a government that is voicing what the students are actually saying, not what we think they are saying.
To answer your question directly, ‘what can students see on their receipt?’ I think they’ll see a student government that is working for them, and because of the things we do this year, things that will be done in the next decade. I am committed to that. You gotta have a vision for a government, something this big that is supposed to be on offense and defense.
To bring it full circle no school has that kind of a vision. When you have that vision laid out, that is your receipt right there. It is a list of services that students can compare with what we are doing. That will be our new frontier, our student corollary to the 20/20 plan.
Q: Is there anything you want to say to the student body from your end?
A: It is very important that students go to the website and to our Facebook. It is important that they are involved in the communication. Right now we are getting five student responses a night which is better than the none last year. But I would love to see 25 student responses every night in my in box. We can only do what you tell us to do, we can only do so much, and if you aren’t saying anything we can’t do anything. It takes two to tango.
