Student Congress is considering changing the title of Student’s Association to Student Government Association.
Sophomore vice president Mikaela Clinton presented the name change resolution, hoping to take after universities like Texas Tech and Texas A&M. Clinton said her goal is to make Students’ Association more recognizable and engaging. Students’ Association has not changed its name since it started in 1923.
“Having spent time not in SA and then getting the chance to be a part of it I realized that the student body knows who we are, but a lot of people don’t really know what we do,” Clinton said. “It’s so much more than throwing events and distributing money. It’s a government that has real influence and real responsibilities. The name Students’ Association can mean a lot of things, and I think that by changing it to Student Government Association, or SGA for short, our purpose becomes more evident and recognizable for students.”
Congress members voted to table the resolution until next semester so that changes could be made to the SA constitution.
Senior president Adam Andrade also proposed a resolution to amend the constitution to publicly report both congress members and executive’s attendance and require records of congress member’s bill and resolution votes on a public forum.
The bill states that there is a need for better record keeping to hold elected members accountable.
The bill states:”In implementing this practice, Students’ Association would model the governmental practices of Local, State, and National legislatures to further teach Wildcats on how to keep public servants.”
Any amendments to the constitution must be voted on by the entire student body.
A bill to rename and update the powers and responsibilities of the chief communication office, written by Evan Rodriquez, passed in an attempt to better reflect the needs of the executive cabinet and student body. The chief communication officer will now be called the press secretary and will have a more clearly defined job description.
Jacob Pakele and Oswaldo Garcia proposed a bill to host an ugly Christmas sweater dance party for the student body, allocating $800 for the event to pay for a DJ and reserve the Hunter Welcome Center. The event will take place on December 9 at 8 p.m and will be open to all ACU students.
The American Student Government Association tracks this sort of information and data on every student government in the nation. Student Government is the most common name, while Student Government Association the next most popular.
West Coast institutions usually are Associated Students, but they have to explain that they’re the “student government.” Why not just call it student government?