Every spring, SGA candidates promise to increase student involvement. And every fall, students shrug their shoulders, wonder exactly what the SGA does and continue on with their lives.
Student Government Association President Steve Glickman vowed to put an end to this cycle of apathy last spring, making the organization’s visibility a major part of his platform during his run for office. And Glickman is quick to point out that his administration has been busy this year trying to live up to that promise.
The SGA has launched its first year of a campus-wide listserv, sponsored a wider variety of events and continued past traditions of posting suggestion boxes and soliciting opinions from random students on the sidewalk.
Still, many students interviewed for this story could not answer questions about the SGA’s role in student affairs. When asked about what the SGA has done to reach out to the student body, one respondent thought “SGA” stood for “Straight Gay Alliance.”
Glickman countered that the organization has received more than 40 applications for SGA involvement — mostly from freshmen — since the summer.
“To those students who don’t know what SGA is or what it does,” he said, “I’d just say they should open their eyes and look around them because we’re definitely making strides this year.”
One initiative central to the SGA’s visibility campaign has been its listserv. Originally conceived by last year’s SGA President Jonathan Sachs, the listserv sends notices to students about the SGA’s activities and campus events.
There are more than 2,000 students on the listserv, but on a campus with more than 26,000 undergraduates, that means less than 10 percent of the student body is signed up.
The SGA has also sought to connect with students through hosting a wider array of events than previous administrations. T. Boone Pickens' campus visit last Friday kicked off the organization’s new speaker series. And a free speech forum on Oct. 13 provided one example of how the SGA is trying to inform the student body on university issues.
Students have shown up to these events, but that hasn’t always translated to a wider awareness of what the SGA is and does.
For instance, junior economics major Donna Harris, who attended the SGA’s CrabFest last night, didn’t even know the organization hosted the event.
“I just thought it was a thing on campus,” she said.
Freshman education major Kim Collier agreed.
“Maybe it’s because I’m a freshman, or I’m out of the loop or something, but I didn’t know [CrabFest] was SGA,” Collier said, adding that she hadn’t even heard of the free speech event either.
Other students, such junior economics major Enerel Orgil, think SGA needs to do more to reach out to transfer students.
“They don’t really have outreach for transfer students,” Orgil said. “As a transfer last year, I felt really disconnected because I had to live off-campus. Things are better now that I live on-campus, but I still think they need to do more for transfers.”
openchowski at umdbk dot com
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