Student Government Association plans to involve more of the student body in their decisions this academic year.
SGA members will attend a strategic planning retreat to brainstorm ideas and goals for the semester. The retreat will be at 1 p.m. Saturday in Room 214 in Dulaney-Browne Library. Senators encourage students to attend and share their own requests.
SGA will compile a Top 10 list of the most important items to focus on for the year.
Top priorities and goals for the year will be determined after the retreat, but, in the meantime, SGA President Nic Rhodes is focusing on the progress of past projects.
Food service
SGA had several meetings last year with Sodexo, the campus food service provider, to negotiate to-go boxes for hot food in the caf and food trucks on campus for special events. Sodexo agreed to test a hot food to-go pilot program, allowing students to take a box of hot food home from the caf Monday through Friday, but only during lunch. The pilot program is underway and will end Sept. 30.
Sodexo officials also agreed to revise their catering guidelines and off-campus vendor rules, which they are scheduled to publish at the end of the month, Rhodes said.
Instead of banning all outside vendors, Sodexo agreed create a form to allow students to apply for an outside vendor for their event. The applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis, but Sodexo will be more willing to defer if the caf is closed during the event and if the vendor provides food Sodexo does not already make, Rhodes said.
Plus or minus
Rhodes continues the push to change the university grading policy to a standard system, one without the plus/minus scale. SGA distributed a survey last semester asking student opinions, and the majority voted in favor of the change, Rhodes said. He added that Dr. Jonathan Willner, chairman of economics and finance, transferred current student grades to the standard system and saw a GPA increase for 60 percent of students.
“We’ll put up a resolution in the next few months that clearly states our request to change the system, along with the data to support it,” Rhodes said. “However, I was told that until we have a permanent provost, instead of an interim, there’s not much we can do.”
The budget
SGA’s monetary allocation from the university remained the same as last year. Additionally, they have some leftover funds, allowing them to increase the Student Activities Council budget by a few thousand dollars.
SAC is the organization in charge of creating events for the student body. They’re typically in charge of things like Homecoming and Big Event.
“We wanted to give most of the excess money to SAC, because that’s the part of SGA that students see and directly benefit from,” Rhodes said. “We also plan to set aside some funds to revamp the website. The only iffy part about the budget is the Student Bar Association budget.”
OCU mandates SGA to allocate a certain chunk of money each semester to the SBA, the law school’s version of SGA. The amount of they receive is based on their enrollment data, whereas SGA’s budget is not. SBA’s budget has decreased at a lesser rate than SGA’s during the past few years.
“We think it would be more fair to give them a standard percentage of our budget or simply let OCU’s financial people handle their allocation, instead of it being part of our budget,” Rhodes said.
SGA received a budget cut last year, but still allocated more money to SBA than it had in previous years, according to Student Publication archives. They worked on renegotiating the budget in the fall semester, but continue to have issues with it.
Student Senate
Senate also will see some changes this semester, beginning with seat revisions. The seats are split into academic and grade level-based districts. To get a more accurate student body representation, SGA plans to change to a population-based representation, Rhodes said. Enrollment in each school on campus will determine the number of representatives they receive. Every school will get one to four senators.
Additionally, Holly Randall, SGA vice president and Student Senate president, changed Senate meetings from weekly to biweekly.
“This change will create more substantial and productive meetings,” Randall said. “It will allow us to handle more legislation per meeting.”
Students who are not on Senate will be invited to attend monthly town hall meetings to voice their opinions. Faculty and staff can also attend the discussions.
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