OPINION: SGA Election Awards Residential Students More Representation

 

 

(Logo. Source: Student Government Association at UT-Tyler.)

Student government elected a new chief of staff this week in a special election at the end of the semester. Senator Jennifer Chandler won the assembly's vote in a three-way race among two other current SGA members, Allison Schwartz and Tyler Paige. In her campaign pitch to the assembly, Chandler championed her priority for inclusion and accessibility in SGA as well as her three years of experience as resident advisor (RA) in Ornelas Hall student housing. 

With Chandler's election, Student government advances yet another residential student to a position of power. There is nothing is wrong with this in principle. After all, all students, both residential and commuter, have the right to participate in student government. However, given the obscurity with which SGA operates to most commuter students, it is mostly residential students who know about its activity and therefore stand the most to benefit from their access to student government. In other words, residential students know about student government's activity. Commuter students largely do not. Therefore, student government reflects mostly residential student priorities given residential students' over-representation within SGA given its advantageous access to the assembly.

In short, this means that Chandler's election represent another residential student's ascendancy to a position of campus power. The residential students' priorities will have another representative in a representational body that is supposed to represent all of the student body. 

Student government is weighted to reflect residential student priorities over commuter student priorities. Chandler's election, though legitimate, appears to be another instance of the residential students' advantage over the commuter students' disadvantage.

Until there is relative parity between the residential student constituency and the commuter student constituency in the amount of awareness each has of student government activity and opportunity, then it is likely residential students will continue to dominate important positions of representation within the student body. 

Closing the information gap between commuters and campus is a key to the commuter constituency's success in campus representation and for favorable university policy.

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