By Brad Atzinger
Under new leadership, the University of Louisville’s Student Government Association might experience major structural changes this fall.
An amendment to the SGA constitution, which creates a House of Representatives, will be proposed to the Senate later this month, SGA President Brian Hoffman, a senior political science and economics major, said.
The amendment, drafted by SGA Executive Vice President Kate Brueggemann, allows each Registered Student Organization one representative.
“All Registered Student Organizations are invited to participate,” Brueggemann stated. “It will give RSO’s the chance to hear about each other’s events and potentially provide more opportunities for collaboration between them.” With more students involved in SGA, Brueggemann believes that the organization will be better able to reach people and affect more students.
“By making SGA bigger, more students will be able to unite and come together to make this a less divided campus,” Brueggemann, a senior political science major, said. “Having more people, means getting more ideas.”
The representative’s duties will include recommending legislation to the senate, stating approval or disapproval of the Senate legislation and executive officer actions, and advising any actions executive officers should take.
However, the resolutions will not actually be enacted unless they are passed through the Senate.
“It doesn’t really seem like it gives them the power to do anything,” Lindsey Joyce, a junior biology major, said. “It’s really not giving them that much more power than they already had.”
The House of Representatives will be required to meet twice during each semester with Brueggemann overseeing each meeting as the chair.
“We’ve had several different groups say they don’t have an opportunity to voice their concerns to SGA,” Hoffman said. “This gives them the chance.”
While Hoffman and Brueggemann both agree that the House of Representatives gives the chance for more students to be engaged in the university, they said the new branch needs big numbers to properly function.
“It will take at least 30 to 35 RSO’s signing up to make it successful,” Hoffman said.
Although the idea was originally initiated and rejected last spring, Brueggemann said that circumstances have changed to make the creation an ideal opportunity.
SGA plans on reading the amendment to the Senate tonight and then voting at the next Senate meeting to either accept or reject the idea.
