Attendance policy, lack of information limits involvement

The SGA is big news this month due to the elections, but if next year is like this year, there will be senate seats available for the taking. Mandatory attendance and a lack of SGA information may be reasons.

Currently more than a quarter of the senate seats are vacant and all that is required is for qualified students to volunteer to serve.

I like getting involved, so when I heard about the vacancies earlier in the year, I e-mailed the president about volunteering for a seat.

After getting information about the requirements and calculating how much time it would require for weekly meetings and events every month, I kindly passed.

The strict attendance requirements were just too much for me, and that may be one reason other students are slow to get involved in student government.

According to the SGA constitution, not only does it require attendance at weekly meetings, but senators are also expected to participate in all sponsored events. The site lists 12 events for March and April.

Rather than encouraging involvement, mandatory attendance may be limiting involvement. Students are not willing to commit that much time so they never get started.

While policies are necessary to ensure that there is a quorum and that senators are actually involved, their presence at events has little to do with senators representing their constituency.

Mandatory attendance does ensure good attendance for events such as the Town Hall meeting and the Toga Party, but that doesn’t translate into good student government.

Another problem is that students may not be familiar with what is happening in the SGA. Sponsored events are well advertised, but the governing aspects of the SGA are not so well known.

The SGA Web site, like so many student organizations has limited official information. It does mention a Blackboard site that has more information, but it does not tell you how to find and enroll in it. That is where I found the constitution, by-laws and other documents.

From those documents, I learned that although attendance is required, members could petition for an excused absence, but that information is not well known.

Additionally, the SGA policy does permit three unexcused absences per semester. Talking to one of the senators about this issue, I found out that the SGA is considering changes that would make it even more lenient on absences.

That would be a good step toward involving more students in the SGA. Not only should the SGA be more concerned about performance than attendance at meetings and events, students should also have better information about the purpose of the senate and its requirements.

By Dana Bell Opinion Writer