SGA introduces bills to increase transparency
The Student Government Association introduced legislation Tuesday night to make SGA more transparent.
Senator Malachi Petersen, former Volante editor in chief and current representative of the graduate school, introduced three bills that would increase the transparency between SGA and students.
The first bill would amend the SGA constitution to require the organization’s weekly meetings to be open to the public and allow the public to record the meeting.
The bill also requires any special sessions to be announced publicly.
The second bill introduced by Petersen would require the election steering committee to “compose a written report detailing all donations to and expenditures by executive campaigns.”
Petersen said this would allow students to know the source of donations to senators and executive team members.
“This is similar to the Federal Election Committee, which shows where donations come from and how they’re spent,” Petersen said.
Brett Ries, a first-year criminal justice and political science double major, wrote an amendment introduced by Petersen that requires the transcript of regular session, special session and committee meetings to be published.
Ries said during a previous meeting discussing the sanctuary campus resolution, Senator Marcus Ireland didn’t reveal who voted against the bill in committee.
“He said he wasn’t allowed to disclose that,” Ries said. “That seemed really odd to me that students aren’t allowed to know how their representatives are voting. I think it’s such an urgent thing that we need a bill to get it required instead of hoping they do something on their good morals.”
All bills were sent to the internal review committee for review.
While none of these bills were passed upon their introduction, Petersen said a lot of good discussion took place during the meeting.
“It was a productive conversation,” he said. “I believe a majority of the senate wants to be transparent and there’s willingness to move forward with some of these bills.”
In other business, eight at-large senators were sworn in during this week’s meeting. There were 26 applicants.
