The Student Government Association (SGA) continued its discussion about unrecognized, off- campus organization members’ involvement in on-campus organizations during the Monday, March 25 committee meeting on the issue.
Last week’s meeting consisted of an open forum where students were able to voice their opinions openly and throughout the discussion.
This discussion involved the most up-to-date version of the revised constitution. The meeting was set to last 45 minutes, but because of the amount of intense and thorough discussion, it ended two hours after its start time.
The overall goal of this meeting was to get a group consensus of what the student body thinks about members of off-campus organizations involvement in recognized, on-campus organizations.
This week, Senior Class President Gena DeMarco led the group of about 75 students who participate in many different recognized and unrecognized organizations as they discussed each specific part of the resolution draft in detail.
The meeting started out as a large discussion and then each student was given five minutes to discuss any amendments or suggestions they could make to the resolution.
Throughout the meeting, SGA President Donald Knight was there to answer any questions that students had about the issue while also encouraging students to discuss this issue from every angle. His goal was to look out for every individual and student on campus.
After DeMarco reviewed each slide, and after students were able to vocally share their opinions on each paragraph of the constitution, every person in attendance was able to participate in an anonymous vote to either pass or deny each part of the constitution.
Before voting on the constitution, the SGA gave the students an opportunity to make changes and amendments to each statement.
During the voting process, each student was required to close their eyes and then was able to raise their hand to either pass or deny the statements that were currently up for discussion. Only 51 percent of the overall vote was needed for each statement to pass.
Each paragraph was highly debated, and the students in attendance were actively voicing their different opinions on the issue.
Due to all of the debating and voting, the resolution draft to the constitution made it out of the meeting with a few minor alterations.
Now, the SGA is responsible for making a few grammatical changes to the new resolution draft and will present it as a whole to the rest of the SGA so that it can be discussed further for approval.
After the discussion came to an end, DeMarco informed students of the next meeting, which took place the following day, Tuesday, March 26, to continue unresolved business.
Knight said this about the next meeting: “Tuesday’s meeting will be short and more focused on in- house issues and general problems that the students are having. We will discuss this issue slightly and then continue with other business and then revive the issue next week.”
Knight also stated that no voting will take place at this week’s SGA meeting, but there will be another discussion about the issue planned for next week.
