SGA passes constitutional referendum

By: ZANE GONZALEZ

Staff Writer

@ZaneGonzo36

At the beginning of the semester, the Student Government Association (SGA) started talks of making some changes to their constitution, and the process that it was going to take.

This past week, the SGA’s constitutional referendum passed with 108 student votes. A minimum of 80 votes was required to approve the changes to the SGA’s constitution.

A lot of changes seem to be minor, as small words have been changed, but there are also some large new additions to the constitution as well. Among those are the additions of two chief representatives for each school at the university, as well as a new SGA Ambassador position.

The chief representatives will be chosen by the Student Council of each college and are required to provide a monthly report to the SGA, along with holding similar responsibilities as other SGA members by having office hours and serving as active agents of the SGA.

The president of the student body, with the senate’s approval, will appoint the SGA Ambassador. Their job is to spread awareness about the SGA by either speaking to a different class each week or twelve classes throughout the semester. The position is a one semester term, but can be reinstated by a vote from the student senate.

Along with the new positions comes a new “Leadership Clause” that impacts the way clubs ask the SGA for funding. The clause states, “a funding request proposal will be deemed invalid if the presentation of the funding request is done solely by the faculty or staff advisor.”

The SGA is encouraging students to take leadership and initiative to make their presentations to their fellow students instead of faculty.

A few minor changes that were made as well were the additions of senate members being removed from office by a signed executive order from the president of the SGA.

Also, two new awards were added to the constitution, the Superior Senatorial Merit Award and the Superior Leadership Award.

Each award will be given to the SGA members that meet the requirements of that award. For the Superior Senatorial Merit Award, a Senator must be present for 80 percent of the SGA meetings and have visited 12 clubs or classes each year, provided there is written record.

For the Superior Leadership Award, an SGA Ambassador or Representative must be present for at least ten of all SGA meetings throughout the year and have visited 20 classes throughout the semester to educate them about the SGA.

Now that the constitution is passed the SGA will continue business, which includes attempting to talk with a representative from Sodexo, working with clubs’ funding requests and usual day-to-day business.