Seven student legislators have dropped out of the SGA so far this semester, leaving the remaining members scrambling to fill the empty seats.
The application deadline for the open positions is Friday, but if the Student Government Association can’t find enough interested parties, they’ll continue business as usual just as they have in previous years.
The vacancies aren’t entirely surprising to legislators who have been a part of SGA before, such as Speaker of the Legislature Kelley Chubb, who said it wasn’t “too different from previous SGAs.”
By this time last year, Chubb said, five legislators had already left, and by the end of last year, there were 11 open seats.
Usually, legislators quit for lack of time to dedicate to the responsibilities of their position, said Michael Schwartz, the chair of the Recruitment and Retention Committee.
“People know their commitments but underestimate them,” said Schwartz, who is also an engineering legislator. “It looks great on paper, only having two hours of meetings a week, but when you have that paper due on Thursday morning, it’s not so easy anymore. ... Academics always come first. If someone needs to drop one or two commitments to keep their grades up, we support them.”
Schwartz, a senior aerospace engineering major, seemed confident that it would be possible to fill the vacant spots because several legislators have approached him with names of friends who are interested. He said he expects “a good number” of applications by Friday.
“We’re always looking for driven individuals who want to make a difference at the university,” he said. “If there’s someone out there who can balance academics with that, those are the people we want.”
Because students are elected based on college and where they live, the replacements must be from the same area or college as those who quit so as not to leave any one segment of the student body underrepresented. The SGA also has a policy so no legislation is dropped if the sponsor leaves — in those cases, another legislator volunteers to become the new sponsor.
But senior finance and accounting major and SGA business legislator Cindy Kim said the openings make it harder for the SGA to function at its best.
“I do think legislators leaving harms the efficacy of the SGA,” Kim said. “Now we have to spend time finding new legislators, [and] there’s a learning curve for new legislators. It takes a while to get the hang of things, to find out what’s bugging the students, to get to know the deans, faculty [and] staff.”
This year, Chubb said she wants to make it more obvious what being a part of SGA actually means for legislators.
“It’s one of my goals to make it more clear in the elections process what kind of commitment it is,” said Chubb, a senior government and politics major. “The people I’ve talked to all said they didn’t really know exactly what to expect.”
Kim said she had been well informed about what she would have to do as a legislator in SGA, but as soon as the school year — and midterms — started, it was harder to balance everything.
“I knew of the responsibilities and duties required of legislators,” Kim said. “But once the semester started, it still came as a surprise because it’s different once school starts and things start piling on top of another. Priorities can change. … Hopefully, we can find great legislators to fill these open positions.”
openchowski at umdbk dot com
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