YOUR VIEW: SGA Vice President Urges Students to Pay Attention and Have a Voice

Editor, the Auburn Plainsman

I would like to thank you for emphasizing the importance of SGA elections in your recent editorial.

The SGA is always working to increase publicity for our elections in an effort to encourage more students to voice their opinion on who should lead the student body.

Your editorial mentioned many powers that SGA student leaders hold, including the annual allocation of student fees by the Senate Budget & Finance committee, campus organizations requesting status approvals and fees from O-Board, and Cabinet's outreach projects that represent all Auburn students to the community and state.

One factor that you did not mention, however, was that the SGA President is the student voice to the Board of Trustees. He or she forms close relationships with the members, attends all Board meetings, and represents student interests to the Board as an ambassador for the entire student body.

One issue on everyone's mind and in many of the candidates' platforms, is the potential for more tuition increases and ways that we can cut costs to avoid increases.

The SGA President has more access to those who make these decisions, and has more influence over them, than any other student on this campus.

It is important that students continue to voice their own opinions to the student leaders and pay attention to what is going on around campus to make sure that they are well represented.

One of the ways the SGA was hoping to provide more accountability for all elected and appointed officers was to re-structure the Judicial Branch of the SGA so that students are in control of its operations.

The re-structure also intended to make the Judicial Branch more accessible to campus organizations and students in the case that there was a need to voice a complaint or appeal a decision of the SGA.

However, the constitutional amendments that were needed to make these changes did not pass in Thursday's election, so, for another year students will not have a revamped judicial appeals process.

Your editorial focused on the power of student leaders and the importance in holding them accountable to their platforms and the decisions they make, and I admire your goal to focus on that in The Plainsman in the coming year.

It is unfortunate that students had the chance to have that accountability with tangible means through the judicial system, but did not recognize this when voting.

If your editorial is correct in stating that students want this accountability from their elected officers, then voters may not have been informed about what they were voting on, although information about the amendments was readily available.

Nevertheless, the student body spoke and less than the required 66% voted in approval of the changes, so the Judicial Branch will remain unchanged this year.

With or without a more powerful judicial branch, I hope that students get in contact with their Senators and voice their opinions because every student is a member of the Student Government Association, and student opinion does make a difference when your SGA President speaks on the students' behalf.