On Monday, March 18, the Student Government Association (SGA) held the second meeting of the semester regarding the Senate’s official stance on off-campus organization members’ participation in on-campus organizations.
The committee meeting was sponsored by Senior Class President Gina DeMarco and co-sponsored by SGA President Donald Knight, Vice President Brian Reid and Senator O'Neishea Edmonds.
This meeting gave the student body a chance to reflect on their opinions regarding individual student membership within recognized student organizations.
During a previous meeting about this issue, Dr. Tim Pierson, vice president for Student Affairs and advisor to the SGA, discussed the Student Handbook and university policies. He highlighted that these meetings and discussions are largely about the group versus the individual and discussed how complicated the issue has become recently.
At this week’s meeting, each person in attendance received the draft of the resolution that DeMarco wrote prior to the meeting. According to the PowerPoint DeMarco presented to attendees, the goal of the meeting was to "gain an understanding of student opinions regarding student membership in recognized organizations.
Members of both off-campus and on-campus recognized organizations were present at the meeting to voice their opinions on the popular issue. The conversation began with discussion and revisions of the draft by smaller groups at tables, following a large group discussion.
Some of the large and open discussion included involvement, questioning and the sharing of ideas. Students who attended also had the chance to ask the SGA questions about the issue, as well as discuss and ask questions to their fellow students.
Travis Lyles, a student who attended the meeting, said, “We were able to see different points of view and see where people in off-campus organizations are coming from.”
The biggest issue that was brought up at the meeting was that members of off- campus organizations that are not recognized by the university want to be treated as individuals, not judged simply by what organization they chose to join. A main concern expressed for members of off-campus organizations is that there is no university policy that allows for these individuals to be discriminated against by on-campus organizations, but despite the lack of policy, this discrimination is still taking place.
Another main issue is that Longwood does not know what these off-campus organizations are doing. A solution to this would be submitting community service hours or a record of the activities that they participate in.
This meeting gave members of off-campus organizations the opportunity to speak about their organizations and voice their personal opinions about how they have been treated to members of the SGA and other students. Members of the SGA also offered suggestions in which concerned students could take steps to get more involved in this issue to the meeting attendees.
At the end of the meeting, members of the discussion were provided time to write down and submit their opinions and other ideas on how to solve this issue so the SGA can use them when they vote on a solution in the future.
The next committee meeting will be held next Monday, March 25 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. to further discuss this issue and other concerns that have yet to be addressed at previous meetings.
