SGA discusses a new location for weekly meetings
Student Government Association senator Marcus Ireland proposed to open a discussion about changing the location of SGA meetings at their weekly meeting Tuesday evening.
Ireland, an SGA presidential candidate, said he wanted SGA to discuss how they and the student body could benefit from a change in location.
Currently, SGA meets in MUC 216. One suggested option for a new location would be the Freedom Forum, which is located in the Al Neuharth Media Center. This new location would allow SGA to record and livestream their meetings.
Ireland said he didn’t want to suggest a specific new location; he said he wanted to have a general discussion.
“Something we have all noticed, and that we kind of joke about, is that there is never students in our audience, and that’s not really a joke — I think that that’s actually something that we should try to change,” Ireland said. “I just wanted to have an open discussion about should we move, and if we should consider different means of advertising and getting our meeting out to students.”
Ireland said transparency should be important to SGA, and a new location could help improve accountability.
“It’s about the principle of transparency, and if we want our students to be able to keep us accountable,” Ireland said.
Parker Spitzer, a junior studying economics and strategic communications, attended Tuesday’s meeting. He suggested to SGA that they use Facebook Live as a way to connect with students, and he said he had concerns with SGA’s transparency.
“Transparency is important because (SGA) represents every single one of us on campus,” Spitzer said. “They have a lot of money that they have the opportunity to spend on organizations of their choice, so it would seem only fair if they were able to put those meetings up for me to be able to go back and check them.”
Caleb Munce, a senator-at-large and SGA vice presidential candidate, said the current meeting place of SGA is impractical for students.
“The MUC 216 room is not accessible to most students, because most students don’t know where it is,” Munce said. “SGA doesn’t advertise that we’re having meetings here, and it’s a bad location both for audio reasons and for transparency reasons.”
Munce also said he would suggest moving the meeting locations to different colleges.
“If we had it at other schools, it would encourage more students to show up to the meetings,” Munce said.
Also at the meeting, a bill to purchase new recycling toters for North Complex was unanimously passed.
