2008 Woodie Awards
Students push forward with plan to 'Stop SGA!'
Rob Holbert
Issue date: 4/7/08 Section: News
Jeffrey Ryan Harris and Matthew Peterson, two students at the University of South Alabama, have founded a group, along with a petition drive, to abolish the Student Government Association. They used the SGA elections as a means for campaigning, garnering attention and spreading their message to the public.
The central arguments of the grassroots effort is that the SGA is unfair in its practices of allocating funds to other student organizations, wastes student money in general, that all students should not have to pay for organizations that they are not part of (SGA uses funds from student activity fees), and that the organization is useless and centrally inequitable for all students.
Now that elections are over, Harris, former presidential candidate running on a campaign to abolish the organization, is continuing his efforts for its dismissal.
"First, I will emphasize that this was round one of a larger fight," Harris said, "considering that we received over a fifth of the vote, when various members of the SGA, actual and hopeful, anticipated that we would receive a single-digit percentage of the vote."
Harris said that if elected president, he would use the executive veto, which can be overridden by a two-thirds vote by the senate, to enact "damage control," while efforts continued to abolish the organization altogether.
"I wouldn't quite say we lost round one. We had only a week before the elections to educate the public, and we received hundreds of votes and garnered hundreds more signatures," Harris said. "I think our opening move shows that people are hearing us and agreeing with what we have to say."
"The organization fills no necessary role and is fundamentally unjust. Students voices can be heard, much like mine was when I stood against football. I went before the administration and the board of trustees to present the case, and I wasn't in the SGA," Peterson said.
The group cites an incident in the spring 2007 semester when the Heritage Panel had to "fight for funding," claiming that the senate appropriated funds to organizations they were partial to such as the Greeks. According to Michael Smith, senate pro-tempore, the reason there was controversy over funding the Heritage Panel was because they funded them through co-sponsorships the previous semester "for the exact same thing." Smith also commented that this year's appropriations process went smoothly.
The central arguments of the grassroots effort is that the SGA is unfair in its practices of allocating funds to other student organizations, wastes student money in general, that all students should not have to pay for organizations that they are not part of (SGA uses funds from student activity fees), and that the organization is useless and centrally inequitable for all students.
Now that elections are over, Harris, former presidential candidate running on a campaign to abolish the organization, is continuing his efforts for its dismissal.
"First, I will emphasize that this was round one of a larger fight," Harris said, "considering that we received over a fifth of the vote, when various members of the SGA, actual and hopeful, anticipated that we would receive a single-digit percentage of the vote."
Harris said that if elected president, he would use the executive veto, which can be overridden by a two-thirds vote by the senate, to enact "damage control," while efforts continued to abolish the organization altogether.
"I wouldn't quite say we lost round one. We had only a week before the elections to educate the public, and we received hundreds of votes and garnered hundreds more signatures," Harris said. "I think our opening move shows that people are hearing us and agreeing with what we have to say."
"The organization fills no necessary role and is fundamentally unjust. Students voices can be heard, much like mine was when I stood against football. I went before the administration and the board of trustees to present the case, and I wasn't in the SGA," Peterson said.
The group cites an incident in the spring 2007 semester when the Heritage Panel had to "fight for funding," claiming that the senate appropriated funds to organizations they were partial to such as the Greeks. According to Michael Smith, senate pro-tempore, the reason there was controversy over funding the Heritage Panel was because they funded them through co-sponsorships the previous semester "for the exact same thing." Smith also commented that this year's appropriations process went smoothly.
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