As of the Spring 2017 semester, Student Government Association senators are no longer required to write legislation.
“We decided to abolish the legislation requirement in order for you all (the senators) to present quality legislation,” said SGA Vice President Nathan Farnor.
At the previous SGA meeting on Feb. 21, the executive committee had the senators get into small groups and discuss issues on campus that could become possible legislation and then share their ideas with one another.
Sen. Nick Wise and his group want to increase accountability for senators.
“In order to keep SGA retention, I don’t know how possible this is, but make SGA a one-credit hour class,” Wise said.
Some groups had multiple ideas.
“The sidewalks going towards Rogers-Stout are really rough,” Sen. Rachel Boyd said. “People trip on them all the time and so they need to be fixed. It’s a safety hazard.”
Boyd’s group would also like to fix a parking service issue on campus.
“They’ve increased the price of tickets,” Boyd said. “Also, the fact that they’re ticketing all day and all night long now in meter parking and 20-minute parking.”
Farnor assured Boyd he would bring up the sidewalk concern at the next Public Safety meeting so the sidewalk can be scraped and leveled.
Sen. Nick Fasanello wants a permanent position in Office of Equity and Diversity in charge of Diversity Educators.
“It’s currently run by a two year graduate assistant position and with that, the nature of that type of position, it’s momentum is lost after each two years so we’re trying to look into something more stable so it can grow better,” Fasnello said.
After all the groups had suggested their ideas, Farnor encouraged the senators to use this information to do research and write new legislation.
“My request to you now is take advantage of the people in this room,” Farnor said. “I definitely urge you all to work with one another to try to address some of these issues. I’d like to see some legislation from some of these.”
