SGA struggles to communicate with students

By Caitlin Cress

Missouri Western’s SGA is searching for their next president and vice president, but few students are aware this process has begun.

According to SGA President, Dillon Harp, students were informed on Jan. 28 that candidate applications were due Feb. 4 via Campus Announcement on Goldlink. Because of the snow days last week, the deadline was pushed back to Feb. 11. Posters announcing the original deadline were put up around campus.

“As far as I know, they were up before we got the snow last week,” Harp said.

Students are constantly bombarded with email from Student Affairs, concerning events put on by SGA, WAC, RC, the CSE and the CME. Bulletin boards are overstuffed with too much information. So much information is going out that little of it is absorbed. Kathy Kelly of Student Affairs acknowledges that communication from SGA to the students is an ongoing problem.

“We’re trying to find a good way to get the information out to the students,” she said.

Students receive so much email from Student Affairs that most of it is deleted without ever being opened.

“Most of the time I ignore it,” junior Steven Brown said.

Alison Norris, SGA’s communication director, addressed the lack of publicity surrounding the election process.

“I’m not sure why it’s not publicized more,” Norris said. “That’s just the way it’s been the past couple years.” Norris is currently in the running for the SGA presidential election.

Harp offered an explanation as to why so little notification surrounded the candidacy process.

“Trying to get the word out there is very important,” Harp said. “We just get caught up sometimes in the work that we do, and sometimes we just need to focus a little more attention on that. The reason Alison,  I think, said that ‘that’s the way it’s always been,’ is just because we always get working on projects and this seems like we come into this semester, and we’re already five weeks in, and we’re talking about an election. I mean, this is only our second full term. So I guess it kind of just got caught up.”

The SGA budget this semester exceeds $500,000. This budget is largely sourced from fees paid by Western students.

“Hopefully, if people were to realize that, they would be more involved,” Harp said. “We do allocate 20 percent of our budget, almost $130,000, to Student Affairs.”

The Student Affairs portion of the budget includes, for example, the CME, the CSE and WAC.

“They’ve got plenty of money in [Western] Activities Council to use if they want to get involved in that, maybe do a battle of the bands or something,” Harp said. “You know, become a member of WAC and make something like that happen here on campus. I don’t know why more students aren’t involved in WAC, because that’s the one that I think people would have the most fun with, and see the direct benefits of.”

If students get involved in campus government, they will have more say concerning the allocation of funds.

“I think it’s just people don’t understand the potential that SGA has,” Harp said. “I think if students knew the possibilities that were out there, the resume builders, things like that, I think that more would get involved with it. Because it doesn’t cost anything to be a part of, it’s just a little bit of time.”

Harp is interested in recruiting more students for SGA.

“I’m hoping that, over the course of this semester that we can do a little bit more outreach,” he said.

Senior Robby Malone, currently an RA in the Suites, wants to become more involved on campus. He is in the process of completing his application to run for SGA President.

“I felt like if you weren’t in the organization, it’s like secretive,” Malone said concerning the announcement that SGA was accepting candidate applications. “They should have advertised it better.”

According to Harp, hiding the candidacy process from the student body was never the intention of SGA.

“I don’t think it’s a secret, and if that perception’s there, then I don’t want it to be,” Harp said. “It shouldn’t be like that. If anyone wants to be in SGA, it’s there for them. We’re just the voice of the students. We want everyone to become a part of it. I think just my response to that is: ‘We’ve got to do a better job of advertising.’ Because it’s not a secret.”