A proposed piece of legislation in the SGA Student Senate has sparked debate over the role of SGA and its concern for the student body as a whole.
The bill, introduced by North Carrick Senator Eric Harkness and Arts and Sciences Senator Brad Vaughan on March 16, explores the idea of creating a special commission to designate preferred parking spaces to outstanding students.
Though an outcry from the student body emerged over the idea, Harkness said that a lot of the dissent was based on misinformation about the legislation.
“Most of the comments and arguments that have been made regarding this bill were made without knowledge of what the bill truly seeks to do,” he said.
Harkness and Vaughan recently took the opportunity to clear up some of the facts about the situation, stating that their primary purpose in proposing the legislation was to discover a way to reward students, not establish a hierarchy among them.
“We’ve looked at several ideas to go about rewarding people who contribute to the university through various . Our role as senators is to look at outlets on campus that people would see to be a reward,” Vaughan said. “Parking was the first outlet we’ve looked at.”
Harkness added that the parking preference system is still only an idea at the moment.
“All that we’re trying to do is pursue an avenue to reward students,” Harkness said. “We’re not endorsing any specific plan whatsoever at this point.”
The bill itself proposes no specific guidelines for how the system would operate. The only provision the pair suggested is that a commission be formed to further explore ways to reward exceptional students, and one avenue of potential importance is a parking system.
The commission itself, if the bill is passed on March 30, will be composed of five members – two appointed by the sitting SGA president, one by the sitting SGA vice president and two by the chair of the Traffic and Parking Authority.
As for membership on the committee, Harkness said that all students are eligible to be appointed, not just SGA members.
“We want to actively solicit the opinions of other students,” he said. “It would be a positive if they had no SGA experience.”
The pair also said that they did not outline any specific guidelines in the bill because the details, and in fact, whether the idea is actually worth pursuing, should be left to the commission to decide. These details include what constitutes “exceptional” character, which parking spots would be used and how the rewards system in general would function.
“(The definition of exceptional) needs to come from the general consensus of students and what they want to see rewarded,” Harkness said.
Vaughan added that any ideas that have been put forth thus far are merely their opinions and are completely hypothetical, as the commission will work out the fine print.
“We’ve always been careful to emphasize that what we’ve said has no force of law,” he said.
In response to all of the recent dissidence against the bill, both Harkness and Vaughan feel that the debate over this issue is a great thing.
“It’s been good to see the criticism come up, but it will be good to use that criticism constructively,” Harkness said. “Public debate is a very healthy thing.”
Vaughan agreed, but added that such “public debate also needs to be grounded on fact,” and not the misinterpretation of information.
“I would encourage people to allow this debate to continue and see what can come of it,” he said.
Harkness added that he hopes this bill will improve the role of SGA in students’ lives by taking an active step in producing tangible rewards for students who contribute to the university, and that it is not meant to be exclusively SGA-promoting.
“We need to look at ways to reward all students,” he said, “not just ones who have the ability to pat themselves on the back by passing bills.”
