SGA senators reflect on Board of Regents meeting last Tuesday

USD’s Student Government Association resumed their weekly meetings after canceling last Tuesday’s meeting in order to attend the Board of Regents meeting in Rapid City.

SGA sent five members to the meeting, including SGA president Josh Sorbe, vice president Madison Green, office manager Amber Hulse, senator Matt Yetter and senator Christian Skunk.

The meeting was held in Rapid City at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Sorbe said the meeting was a valuable opportunity for Senate members to share their ideas with students involved in student government at other schools in the state.

“I think student federation is a good time for collaboration for student government associations across the state and to shoot ideas off of each other that we may be having and complications we might be having,” Sorbe said. “They are good people to bounce ideas off of because they are doing the same things we are doing just in different places.”

The Board of Regents meeting covered a variety of topics including need-based financial aid, faculty salary competitiveness, Native American student enrollment and free speech policy revisions.

Sorbe said he found the first reading of the free speech policy an interesting point of discussion.

“They saw their first reading and it was approved to their second one where the Regents will most likely vote on the policy in December,” Sorbe said. “Outside of that, we also met South Dakota student federation out at Mines and there we discussed the Board of Regents priorities, which will be introduced in resolution from USD to student federation for all their agendas.”

Sorbe and Green attended the meeting on behalf of USD, while the rest of the senators went on a volunteer basis. The Board of Regents meets every two months.

Skunk said attending this meeting gave him an appreciation for USD’s SGA.

“We should take pride in what we have as far as student government goes,” Skunk said. “If you look at the student federations at the School of Mines, their office is one room. We are very lucky here.”

At this week’s SGA meeting, the Senate relooked at five bills and one resolution. Three of the five bills were passed at this meeting. Senate Bill 78, which appropriates the budget for the Seldinger Society, Senate Bill 79, which approves the budget for the Philosophy club and Senate Bill 80 which appropriates the Math Club budget.  

The other two bills, Senate Bill 76, which poses to change the SGA election dates and Senate Bill 77, which is on student organization recognition, will be brought back after going to internal reviews for the next meeting.

Senate Resolution 6, which poses to change the MUC hours back to 2 a.m., was discussed and voted on, but it did not pass. Besides the discussion for this resolution, special guest Dan Dailey, Dean of Libraries, also addressed the Muenster University Center hours.

Dailey distributed a document of facts for the Senate to look at while he spoke. According to the document, I.D. Weeks Library originally began staying open till 2 a.m. in 2010. The dean of libraries and staff reviewed the policy again in 2014 and saw that there was the low utilization of the library, but decided to keep the policy as is.

Before the hour’s change was made this school year, there was a thorough review of the current hours. Data was collected on the number of student present after midnight along with the use of computers after midnight.

“A very small fraction of those entries into I.D. Weeks happen after midnight during the weeknights,” Daily said. “I asked our staff to look at the utilization of I.D. Weeks after midnight, we dug into the statistics in 2017 and 2018. We’ve been as diligent as possible in terms of redirecting available dollars going towards the libraries.”

SGA will not meet next week due to the Vince Staples concert held on campus.