The Student Government Association held their orientation meeting Sept. 15 over Zoom. In the absence of President Shivam Patel, Vice President Seth Manning led the meeting.
Guest speakers Phil Smith, teaching and learning specialist for the Center for Teaching Excellence, and Ashely Sergiadis, digital scholarship librarian in the Sherrod library, opened the meeting with an update on their plan to save students money on textbooks.
Called the Open Education Resource Initiative, it is designed to encourage the creation and free distribution of textbook materials at ETSU rather than outsourcing the materials through a traditional publisher.
Smith explained that the initiative rewards faculty for using OER textbooks in their classroom, and there is a growing collection of OERs created and used by faculty at ETSU.
New SGA business included the election of three new student seats in the College of Arts and Sciences: Gracie Carter, Logan O’Handley and Bailey Norris.
Additionally, Vice President Seth Manning presented the SSA-20-002 legislation bill to members on behalf of the SGA executive team. The bill is intended “to amend the Student Trustee selection process to give greater power, transparency and democratic sovereignty to the Student Government Association in the decision.”
The bill was approved by SGA members and will move forward.
The meeting also included a promotion for the Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature, which is a four-day event in Nashville in November of each year. Bills passed at the TISL conference have the potential to move on to the Tennessee Senate Legislature.
“I would definitely recommend it to anyone, even though it is virtual,” said SGA member Nathaniel Vernon.
During the executive remarks, Manning discussed the implementation of a cap on SGA meetings, wherein each meeting cannot exceed one hour and 15 minutes in length. Items not covered in one meeting will roll over to the next meeting.
The goal of the cap on the length of meetings is to avoid Zoom exhaustion and monopolizing the time of SGA members. The orientation meeting lasted one hour and 10 minutes.
