Where is the SGA?

The issue: SGA members have been hard to find for the past few weeks

Our stance: Students need their voices heard

It’s been weeks since classes started, it doesn’t seem like everyone is off on the right foot.

The beginning of the academic year is the time for making impressions. Activity in student organizations is crucial for member recruitment and student support. This is the time that students are getting a basic understanding of their respective classes and assessing which will be tougher and which they can skip a few days of without losing letter grades. New students and old are looking for student organizations to be leaders on campus. They want someone to listen to them. People want their voices heard.

The Student Government Association is usually the place that those voices can be heard, and for the past few years they have been doing a substantial job at making positive changes for the campus community. If students don’t see SGA members who are supposed to be leaders of PUC actively involved in the workings of campus life, they will lose much of the faith that previous SGA administrations have built up in the organization.

Last year, it was almost impossible to come up to the third floor of the SUL without seeing someone working in the SGA office. In the past few weeks, the opposite has been the case. It has been almost impossible to find someone in the SGA office to talk to, and the organization has not seemed very present on campus. At one point there were even hand-written signs on the office door asking, “Where are you?” and requesting that the SGA put signs with their office hours outside the door so students can find them. So far, there have been no hours posted. Though this is not a requirement, it would help.

Now, it is understandable that everyone is a bit sporadic with office hours at the beginning of the semester, especially when PUC started a week earlier than normal. Many members of SGA are new to their positions, including President Marisa Henderson. It is understandable that they may be overwhelmed with the workload, as well. However, a good impression is not being made on this new administration when it is extremely hard to contact them. This is the time when the new SGA administration needs to be strong and proving to the campus community that they are committed.

Just because it is the beginning of the school year doesn’t mean there is less activity on campus. The SGA needs to be prominently displayed at all times as a symbol of student opinion, or student opinion may be forgotten. Students need to be able to feel that they can come to the SGA with issues and actually have something done about those issues. This doesn’t happen when students cannot even find SGA members at PUC.