The Student Government Association as an organization is bloated and does not truly represent the student body. 

SGA is poorly run due to a lack of resources but also due to the lack of vision and unwillingness to push boundaries in the best interests of the student body. SGA acts in a more ceremonial role than an actual government, while also having an endless tide of drama that happens behind closed doors. 

All these things have led me to decide that SGA was not the best outlet for change at WSU and led to my resignation.

Veteran senators, or what I will call the “Old Guard,” act as a stalwart against change to the status quo. New senators like me get grilled heavily by other new senators and the Old Guard for our legislation, while Old Guard members essentially get a pass. 

Meanwhile, there are many problems at WSU that go unsolved. The long list includes, but is not limited to, lack of accessibility of information, lack of public health resources, unstable internet access, not engaging with students where they are at, inconsistency in enrollment and international students struggling in getting to campus. I could go on forever, but how can we really fix these issues?

The first option, but not a very favorable one, is changing SGA from an actual government to more of a leadership council. Many universities, big and small, have different forms of government for students to voice their concerns, and many universities choose a leadership council as opposed to a full-fledged government. This would mean that SGA would go from having a senate, judicial and executive branch down to a simple seven-to-12 person council made up of students that can handle many of the more ceremonial tasks like condemnations, calling for celebration and taking complaints up and sending them to the university leadership, while the Finance Commission can handle the monetary aspect of SGA. 

This would not only make the central office’s job easier but also make student representatives more responsive and flexible. In the end, if you’re going to be ceremonial, then you might as well make the organization itself ceremonial.

The second option is a multi-stage reform process with an expansion of the central office and a reform committee for SGA can be held to ensure that future SGA sessions are more fruitful and proactive in their engagement with the student body. The first and easiest would be simply the expansion of the central office.

While the central office’s main staff member, Gabriel Fonseca, is really overworked and often undervalued by the university from a senator’s perspective, having multiple people that can do the job of Mr. Fonseca would allow for a better engagement between SGA and the central office, which oversees and helps in running SGA smoothly. 

Though the reform of SGA is a whole other beast. In my talks with Speaker Victoria Owens, she expressed agreement and willingness for SGA to make reforms to the process of legislation. 

While SGA used to have engagement as a requirement through the usage of senator hours, I heard the words senator hours and I knew exactly what the problem was. Having an engagement commitment that is based on hours and not acts of engagement itself can make engaging with your constituents more of a chore than an actual conversation and collection of concerns. 

Instead, engagement should be a direct requirement through a dual committee process. This first committee can act as an engagement committee where tabling can be scheduled and surveys that go out to students could be made, reviewed, and then legislation created off student responses would ensure that engagement is baked into the process of making legislation. 

Now the drama, oh boy the drama. In my time in SGA, I have had hostile remarks thrown my way, dealt with people belittling me, have people make it clear they feel like they are superior to me, and even people who are even part of the Old Guard make it clear they do not like me all the way back during senator orientation. 

From the get-go it was clear there were three subsets of members of the Old Guard, people who acted as leaders not only to new senators but on behalf of SGA as a whole, those who make SGA a hostile working environment, and those who are just tired of it all. 

These subsets are not restricted to only one subset that a member of the Old Guard can inhabit but can shift more toward one or another at times. 

Other than interpersonal conflicts are the things I’ve also heard from fellow senators. Many times I felt like I didn’t have the space to disagree until I really found my footing around the end of my time at SGA, more or less feeling like I had to agree with the sentiment of the Old Guard. This caused me to find myself to agree with thoughts like, ‘The Sunflower doesn’t really do its job as reporters about SGA’ or the quiet part that isn’t dared to be said out loud — that because of the lack of engagement from students, SGA doesn’t really have to care about them, when SGA is the cause of the lack of engagement from students. 

In the end, the only power that SGA wields is that of student fees as this directly affects the pocketbooks of the student body. This main power, with the lack of engagement with students, makes SGA more of a bank that is asking for fees to use it, while at the same time making students go through a lengthy application process to get their money withdraw,n which the bank could either approve or deny. 

With all these conflicting problems of lack of engagement, an overworked central office, drama, lack of vision and being a bank run by essentially courteous lords, it would surprise me that any new senator can get to the student fees process, as most new senators quit before then. 

Leadership within the legislative branch has tried this session to make the impossible possible and move mountains, but this is a problem that’s bigger than the legislative leadership can tackle. It’s a problem that the entirety of SGA must tackle. 

I would love to rejoin SGA, but only with the extensive reforms I’ve mentioned in place. So, unless you’re fine with not seemingly getting a whole lot done in the grand scheme of things, be my guest and run for SGA. I sure as hell won’t.