The Student Government Association called for an addition of one SGA Senate seat for the College of Liberal Arts for the upcoming SGA term in the annual reapportionment at its Nov. 12 meeting.
Carly Albright, College of Science and Mathematics senator and sponsor of the bill, said the change is due to the University College being dissolved and absorbed by the College of Liberal Arts. The University College, which housed the aviation and interdisciplinary majors, had one Senate seat since being formed in 2016.
Schyler Burney, vice president of SGA, presides over Senate. She said in her four years of being involved with SGA, this is the only seat reapportionment she has seen. There are 28 Senate seats divided among the various colleges, five at-large seats and one seat for graduate schools for a total of 34 senators.
“We have 34 senators with the five at-large and the one graduate school, and those don’t change,” Burney said. “It’s only the schools and colleges that we look at the apportionment for.”
The College of Liberal Arts representation will increase from three seats in Senate to four. Each year, the number of SGA senators is determined by the number of students at Auburn that enroll within each college that has SGA Senate representation, similar to redistricting in the U.S. House of Representatives, following a census.
The bill for reapportionment was unanimously passed. Burney said that Max Zinner, graduate school senator and chair the Code of Laws Committee, helped ensure the procedure for reapportionment was done correctly.
“Our Code of Laws Committee and Senator Max Zinner, who’s chair of that committee, have done a great job of leading that effort,” Burney said.
The number of enrolled students in each college vary each year, and reapportionment allows for Senate to keep proportional representation.
These numbers are based upon an Excel spreadsheet that is generated after the 15th day of class, which is the last day to drop a course without a grade penalty.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Senator Max Zinner was a co-sponsor of the bill along with Senator Carly Albright. Albright was the sole sponsor of the bill. We regret the error.
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