SGA votes to stay in the Student Federation

On Oct. 4, SGA President Nathaniel Steinlicht, Vice President Michelle Novak and at-large senators Josh Anderson and Teagan McNary attended the Student Federation meeting
in Aberdeen.

Prior to the Student Federation meeting, USD and SDSU paid two-thirds of the budget for the Federation and represented one-third of the votes.

Novak said she thought the previous amount they were paying to the Student Federation wasn’t fair because they paid much more than other universities, but they had the same amount of votes as everyone else.

“We paid a lot more money than the four other universities. Not as much as SDSU because they have more students. USD and SDSU paid the most,” she said. “So that was the major problem, but we’ve remedied that with the changes that were made on Oct. 4, which is why our senate voted to stay in
the Federation.”

There were two main agreements that USD wanted to have with the Student Federation in order to stay. First, they wanted consensus voting. This meant that there would be a more dynamic way of reaching an agreement than voting. Second, Senators wanted the board of directors to have to agree to lobby on any issues.

At this week’s SGA meeting, the senators voted unanimously to remain a part of the
Student Federation.

At-Large Senator Teagan McNary said this vote will better represent
USD’s students.

“It allows us to represent our students on a better level because we took it to a student vote, and now we’re taking less of our student fees and being able to represent them a lot better,” she said.