The SGA executive board is attempting a new strategy to familiarize students with the organization’s initiatives and purpose through an awareness campaign.
Executive members discussed the new initiative at a roundtable meeting Wednesday evening in the UC room 315 D.
SGA press secretary Sam Owens spoke about the initiative’s focus on connecting more with the student body.
“You just educate people essentially about what’s going on and how (SGA) works,” Owens, junior in public relations, said. “It’s just going to be a visible display of ‘this is what we’ve done.’”
SGA executive board members, along with graduate student adviser Connor Fritz, created graphics as well as a slogan that they plan to display around campus within the coming weeks.
In previous years, displays of SGA initiatives and purpose were not visible on campus. Executive members said the display will consist of a three poster “tri-series.” Owens and other executive members hope the new campaign will attract more student interest in becoming a part of SGA affairs.
“The general idea is that when you see this initiative you’re going to be able to know what it is SGA has done for you and how you’re represented by SGA,” Adam Roddy, SGA chief of staff, said. “It’s just a good way for students to really know about SGA and what all it does.”
SGA President Ross Rowland said board members plan to utilize social media mediums such as Twitter and Facebook more in the coming weeks. The SGA website is also undergoing construction as their previous web master has been unavailable to make updates due to job travel.
“We’re working on making sure that we have access to our tools and resources,” Rowland, senior in public administration, said.
SGA will also reconstruct its constitution after a long hiatus of revision. The changes were influenced partly by other SEC universities’ SGA councils. Though they were interested in implementing many strategies used by the other organizations, members wanted to model UT’s SGA after a real government by formalizing bills in a committee as opposed to in a senate.
“Committees right now serve as an afterthought, which is not how we want them to function,” Owens said. “What we want to do through this constitution revision is to hopefully come up with a way to allow students who have to serve in these committees and then committee members will have representatives that will serve in the senate. It will be more of a committee-based concentration than a senate-based concentration.”
Members said three revisions will explicitly list roles and duties of senate representatives in order to alleviate confusion and prevent lackadaisical work among the senate members. The revisions must still pass senate twice before official changes are made.
Executive members also discussed hopes to make all staff parking lots accessible to students at 4:45 p.m. instead of 5:00 p.m. for the Fall Semester. Parking lots No. 9 and No. 23 are undergoing a testing phase and are available to students at the new time.
