Student Government Association begins planning restructure

At the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate meeting on October 11, students met to discuss plans for an SGA restructure. A restructure has been discussed for several years, but recent events such as the pandemic and cabinet member resignations have made it apparent to a group of senators that now would be the best time to initiate a restructure.

The SGA was first founded in the late 1990s as a replacement for the previous governing body, the Student Council. Discussions about restructuring the SGA have been ongoing for years, but never met with significant progress. Instead, various minor changes have been made to the general structure of the SGA, such as including the VPAA as a part of the cabinet, and a change to the constitution.

Concerns about the current system stem from a variety of issues. Initially, concerns were focused primarily on the method of student representation. As is, the SGA has representatives elected by class year; an alternative system has been proposed which includes representation based on major or department in order to better represent all students. More recently, senators have raised concerns about the lack of representation on the basis of identity, experience, and other areas.

In addition to this, the current system places advocacy for 3,700+ students on the backs of only 6 students, the cabinet members. While the SGA was not intended to have cabinet members as its only point of contact between administrators and students, it serves as an easy ‘one size fits all’ solution for admins that need to work with a student in relation to student organizations.

According to E.J. Hannah, who recently acceded to the position of SGA president, “By presenting six students as the main points of contact for both student and admin concerns, there is so much room for error … With that, it becomes much harder for senators to work with the Cabinet, and for either parties to work with administration, despite everyone having the same goal of providing the best experience at Stevens possible.”

In the wake of the recent resignations, it has become increasingly clear to some senators that there is an element of risk associated with putting so much responsibility and power on such a small set of students.

Previous concerns also included rebranding the SGA in order to make it more accessible to more students. These stemmed from a desire to increase student involvement in the SGA and ensure that it was representing the student body as best as possible. However, previous attempts to restructure the SGA were met with logistical difficulties. In order to pass a constitutional change, ⅓ of the undergraduate student body has to vote on the change, and ⅔ of those voting have to approve of the change. Regardless of each student’s opinion on the validity of the changes, this constitutes polling around 1200 students, with at least 800 votes in favor of the change. It is difficult to get feedback from so many students during a normal semester; this has been compounded by the pandemic as outreach and involvement is even more difficult.

After having a series of meetings, senators decided on a short list of qualities that a restructured SGA should have. These include:

As of October 22, the restructure is still in the planning phase. Several different structures have been proposed so far, including a ‘Three Pillars’ model, which involves having multiple committees, each with their own President elected by the student body, and a parliamentary-style system where power is more widely distributed among the senate. The oldest of these is a proposal by former Senator Mark Krupinski’20 from the spring of 2019, which involves having one president and multiple vice presidents in control of various committees.

Moving forward, senators involved in the process will be working on the restructure outside of meetings. While progress is being made, there are still certain challenges that need to be overcome before a restructuring can be finalized. In order to be successful, a restructuring needs to be official, which requires a large amount of student involvement to occur. In addition, the restructure needs to have the support of the administration in order to be effective in the upcoming semesters. Early signs seem to indicate that the administration will be supportive, but it is still too early to tell whether it will find widespread support or not. The new system will also need to consolidate its paradoxical role as both student advocator and rule-enforcer.

At the meetings, senators also decided that in order to ensure that the rest of the community stays involved in the process, the results of the restructure meetings will be provided during the discussion section of the standard SGA meetings. These sections will also be longer, in order to allow for a more detailed discussion on the topic. Plans to survey the student body for feedback were discussed, but it is unclear when a survey would be created or distributed.