Student Government Association Senate closed their fall semester Tuesday evening.
Four bills were brought the table and passed throughout the evening and the meeting opened with a town hall. Junior studying psychology Taylor Winkel opened the town hall by sharing her struggles with the Student Counseling Center.
Winkel said she has struggled throughout high school and college with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder based on personal and familial circumstances.
“I began to be so strung out with anxiety and depression here at UT that I ended up having nightmares for a month,” Winkel said of her freshman year.
Winkel said she reached out to the Counseling Center to find no sessions available until the spring semester.
“I begged for help and I cried and I asked for anything that you guys can do for me and I was sent out of there with no resources, no help,” Winkel said.
A psychiatrist was made available to Winkel her sophomore year, but Winkel said it was “an absolute nightmare.”
“She was the most unprofessional woman I’d met in my life,” Winkel added.
“I gave her three chances,” Winkel said. “I wanted it to work so bad and I was so desperate for help.”
Coming into junior year, Winkel’s psychiatrist left the university without giving references for a new form of help. Winkel decided to take to Twitter with her concerns and was surprised by the response.
“I have had the outpour of the people connecting with me saying that they have gone through similar experiences,” Winkel said. “They have experienced the same neglect.”
SGA Senator Sophia Rhoades, sophomore in interdisciplinary programs and former chair of the student health committee, presented a bill to address Counseling Center concerns.
“The work that they do is amazing and they all work very hard,” Rhoades said. “But there are … steps that need to be taken. So this bill kind of addresses all of that.”
The Counseling Center currently has 13 full-time staff members and are expected to have 14 in January. The International Association of Counseling Services recommends 18-20 counselors for the current 28,894 students on campus.
The bill resolved that Senate and administration reexamine the funding allocation for the Student Counseling Center, SGA integrate the link to the counseling center and the 974 help hotline in their bios on all social media platforms and the front page of its website, and ensure adequate funding is provided for the student counseling center to increase staff and visit other parts of campus.
Other bills were introduced including reducing the fee for the fifth and subsequent uses of lockout keys from $25 to $5.
“I’ve seen these lock out cards where we record how often people lock themselves out of their room and it’s sometimes all down the front, all down the back and another one stapled to it and it’s not even October yet” Owen Flomberg, senior in the College Scholars Program and SGA Senate member, said. “It happens and I just feel like we can be doing more for our residents. We’re not trying to totally get rid of the fee entirely, because it’s put there to be an inhibitor for people just locking their key in their room and not caring for it.”
The bill passed 54 to one with zero abstentions.
Another bill introduced the idea that Senate meetings for the 2019-2020 school year occur weekly rather than biweekly.
“I love the idea of it, but I don’t necessarily agree with is, I think weekly commitments are a good idea,” Flomberg said. “Right now we have a committee system that was established last year and I think it’s functioning really well and I would like to see that further entrenched into how Senate functions.”
The senators voted 47 to four, passing the bill.
SGA president and senior studying political science Ovi Kabir also introduced the election commission composed of Election Commissioner and senior studying nuclear engineering Matthew Herald, senior in College Scholars Carly Brown, graduate student Willie Kemp, senior studying political science Jack Larimer and senior studying agriculture leadership, education and communication Catherine Moore.
After some debate and Herald answered questions, the senators approved the commission.
Editor-in-Chief Kylie Hubbard, Managing Editor Tyler Wombles, Campus News Editor Cat Trieu and Senior Staff Writer Gabriela Szymanowska contributed to this article.
UTK senators pass a bill to open a conversation with the administration about the Student Counseling Center at the SGA meeting on Dec. 4, 2018.
