With only one ticket that isn’t even full and a small number of other students running for positions, the Slippery Rock Student Government Association (SGA) is severely lacking candidates for their upcoming election and that’s a red flag for the group’s future and should be a concern for all students at the university.
SGA is without a doubt the most important student organization at Slippery Rock University. Managing a $2 million dollar budget, the SGA Bookstore and overseeing every club and organization at the university, SGA impacts students in every decision the group votes on.
Election season is normally a time of great change, pitting multiple parties against one another in a heated battle of who knows best or has the best ideas for a group. Elections keep organizations alive and healthy, ensuring that the people have a voice in deciding their representative.
As important as elections are, they only work when people are bringing new, different ideas to a group and when people feel strongly and passionately about leading a group to new heights.
With only one major party that has no substantial or concrete ideas on improving the organization or the campus beyond generic buzz words like “a more transparent SGA” and “better relations with administration,” it is clear that SRUnited is not offering anything new to students. Plus, if you’re running on a ticket that isn’t full, that’s a negative reflection of your leadership ability and says to us that you aren’t concerned about having a fully diverse group of individuals to represent students.
Aside from SRUnited being the only party running for election, there were almost no other students running for any positions other than Building A senator. The only “debate” was the competition for Vice President of Student Affairs. The question is whether students just don’t care about SGA or if SGA hasn’t done a good job with advertising about open positions.
Maybe if students were more educated about what SGA actually does, they would be more interested in running for open positions next year instead of just sending in new initiatives and asking for money.
That being said, we don’t really have any complaints about how SGA has been run this year so maybe this small ballot turnout is just an indication that the student body feels comfortable with the current leadership and fails to realize that new students are always needed to take the place of graduating senators. If this is the case, SGA members should have worked harder to reach out to students and encourage them to run for senator positions. Now, they’re forced to cover for that fault and push for students to win write-in spots.
We hope that SRUnited addresses this lack of student involvement in their government and work to bring more candidates and a plethora of new ideas for future elections. We also hope that SGA is successful in recruiting write-in candidates for this election.
