SGA votes to increase student outreach

CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, this article incorrectly stated the amount of money holding meetings in the Prince George's room instead of the Benjamin Banneker Room in the Stamp Student Union would cost the Student Government Association. Because the Benjamin Banneker room is free, the body would pay a $75 fee each time it used the Prince George's room for a meeting. The below article has been changed to reflect this correction.

After SGA President Kaiyi Xie asked members to increase student outreach and transparency, legislators voted at last night's meeting to take two new steps toward meeting those goals.

The Student Government Association unanimously passed a resolution that would offer students more opportunity to voice concerns over university issues by requiring legislators to spend at least two of their four required office hours — from Oct. 31 to Nov. 11 — visiting classrooms and standing outside the Stamp Student Union. Additionally, the body passed a bill in a 22-6 vote to relocate its weekly meetings from Stamp's second-floor Benjamin Banneker Room to the first-floor Prince George's room — which sits by the building's main entrance — once a month, in hopes of drawing more students to its meetings.

Several members, including Xie, questioned whether the fee for the Prince George's Room — which costs the body $75 each meeting, compared to the free Benjamin Banneker Room — was worth the added cost. Although many of the bill's sponsors said a more visible location will encourage students to attend meetings, Xie and others voiced concern over how the charge would affect the body's already tight budget, and whether the move would actually increase student interest.

While Xie said he supported outreach efforts — an issue he focused on in his State of the Campus address two weeks ago — he questioned this particular bill's effectiveness.

"I think they're not treating the root cause of the problem; you're treating the symptom," Xie said in an interview after the meeting. "They keep saying, ‘Oh we can't expect students to come to us.' But then I ask, ‘What's the effect of this bill?' You're just moving to a bigger room that's more expensive, and I don't think students are just going to stumble upon the SGA meeting in the P.G. Room."

But many legislators said if students are not aware of where meetings are held, the SGA's debates and legislation will cease to matter.

"If we are out of sight, we are out of mind to the student body," said letters and sciences legislator Zane Adoum, who co-sponsored the bill. "I think the location is more important than the money."

Other legislators said too few students are aware of what issues legislators address each week — and where they debate them.

"I'm tired of being stuck in the lost corner of the Stamp Student Union," said David Lieb, a computer, mathematical and natural sciences legislator. "I wish we had interaction with more students, because when you get down to it, this place is dead."

But other legislators said the body would be taking away opportunities for other student groups to use one of the most popular rooms on the campus.

"We've been doing a lot toward visibility and outreach with recent initiatives, so this might be overkill," public health legislator Danielle Miller said. "And I don't want one organization taking that room away from another student group."

Xie and other members, however, said because the body will only use the Prince George's Room once a month, students may get confused as to where meetings are held on a week-to-week basis.

"I don't think having a roving meeting is what we want people hearing about the SGA," Xie said.

While some students said they may not actually attend meetings, they appreciated the body's effort to expand its outreach.

"We really didn't know what they were doing, so this is definitely good," senior electrical major Jing Guo said.

Many students said the problem was not the location of the meetings, but rather, that they do not understand how the body operates.

"I didn't even know we were allowed to go to meetings," said sophomore computer science major Ben Cahill. "I thought that they were closed meetings and they gave out referendums."

villanueva@umdbk.com