Recently, the occurrences in Florida have caused me to get a sinking feeling in my stomach whenever politics is mentioned.
After spending Thanksgiving weekend with my CNN-addict father, I was glad to retreat back to ETSU to ignore politics.
But unfortunately, there is a situation arising at ETSU that worries me more than talk of a pregnant chad.
What I am getting at is the way our Student Government Association has represented this university this semester.
First off, through some sort of miscommunication or someone not fulfilling their responsibilities, no delegation was sent to the Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature from ETSU. TISL is a conference of students from all of the state-funded colleges and universities in Tennessee designed to work like the actual state legislature.
While this may not seem like a travesty, it is a disgrace to ETSU’s name.
At the 1999 convening of TISL, ETSU had the third largest delegation in the state and two of last year’s delegates were appointed to governor’s staff positions for this year’s gathering.
Now, because of this, ETSU has lost face before the other colleges and universities in the state.
The second thing that concerns me about our SGA is that they are currently approaching a breach of their own constitution.
I am talking about the fact that I still do not have a student discount card in my hand.
Because the SGA has not as yet contracted with a company to produce the cards, ETSU has lost face in the local community. Area businesses paid a fee to be included in the program and have nothing to show for it.
Now, you may say this is not the fault of the SGA, but I beg to differ. This is the third year in a row that the discount cards have not arrived on time.
During both the Russ Wilson-Ashley Woods and Stacie Harris-Jonathon Fields adminstrations, a company named Uni-Net was used to produce the cards.
Both years, the company caused the SGA to miss the deadline. The first year was not the fault of the SGA, but the second was because they had the option of changing companies.
This year, they decided to solve this problem by going with another company. The new problem is, no company has been selected and the deadline for the distribution of the cards is the first week of the spring semester.
There is no way possible to make the deadline and the SGA has known about the approaching deadline all year.
The third thing the SGA has done to cause ETSU to lose face is its recent undertaking of a project to replace the benches on campus. To fund this project, the SGA allocated itself $12,000 from the student 606 fund.
While this looks like a genuine gesture of kindness, I would like to remind the senators and executive branch of the SGA that students already pay vast amounts of money to this university, some of which goes to campus upkeep. The 606 fund is for student organizations, not campus upkeep.
The SGA has a set policy of placing a cap of $2,250 on 606 funding per application and usually only allocates one-third of that, although the senate sometimes votes to fund more than the maximum.
However, I have never known of the group to allocate $12,000 to any student organization. The fact that the SGA fully funds its own project looks a bit odd.
In my opinion, that makes the SGA lose face with the students. It creates the image that the SGA cares more about itself and its own projects than it does the rest of the students.
I thought caring about all students was what the SGA was elected to do.
In closing, I would just like to add that I hope every member of the SGA makes a personal new year’s resolution to consider the effect their actions have on the reputation of our university.

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