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| Kelly Hacker is a freshman journalism major and writes 'HackAttack' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. |
While this may be appearing a bit late (today being the second day of Student Government Association elections), there's really only one issue I want to address, and I doubt it's going to make much of a difference in how people vote, or if they vote.
One of the questions asked during Thursday night's SGA presidential debate addressed the issue of combating apathy in SGA.
Jayson Manship, presidential candidate, stated at Thursday's debate that he did not believe students at Ball State are apathetic, and he thinks that students actually do care. He said that his slate would increase involvement in SGA by making it easier to get involved in SGA and by utilizing the Web site.
Incidentally, with the small amount of changes that the Manship slate wants to make, this statement does not surprise me. Manship stated in the "Debates Finished" article published in the Daily News last Friday regarding the issue of restructuring SGA, "We should continue with the established pattern. We should keep going with the way it is."
Maybe it's just me, but I would think that a slate of people new to SGA would have new ideas and want to make changes.
Treasurer candidate Nataki Sanders (on the Loving Slate) differed with Manship on this issue, stating that as an active student at Ball State, she has seen a good turnout for an event (out of the 18,000 undergraduates at Ball State) to be 500 students; in the elections maybe 2,000 will vote. Sanders believes that the reason why students don't get involved in SGA is because they do not understand that SGA is there for the students; its job is to represent them.
Both slates seem to want to increase awareness of SGA and to get more students involved with the organization.
The Loving Slate would like to make it easier for student organizations to collaborate with the university by eliminating the fee student organizations must pay to have a seat on SGA, which, according to Funmbi Elemo, a friend of mine who is involved in SGA, is the excuse many student organizations use for not being involved in SGA.
The Manship Slate would make a Web site where students can voice questions and concerns regarding SGA.
Maybe making it easier for students to get involved in SGA might fix the problem of low student involvement. But then again, so many student organizations already make it easy to join by simply requiring students to show up. That's essentially how I got involved with the Debate Team and (for a short time) the Fencing Club.
Apathy is the lack of interest or concern; it seems to me to be an attitude resulting from years of having other people to make your decisions, feeling far removed from influential events, movements and people. Besides, many people are just too lazy to get up and do something.
A group can make changes and improvements geared toward helping students get involved, and Loving's way of doing this seems to be the solution to an established problem.
I fail to see where the creation of an online question and comment box, while making it easier for students to voice concerns, will improve overall involvement in SGA.
Write to Kelly at knhacker@bsu.edu
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