Serve the students.

When you tear away all of the flashy titles and procedures and get right down to it, that’s the sole purpose of the Students’ Association. To serve the student body. The whole student body.

Is it possible for the Students’ Association to benefit every single student on campus? Probably not. Does that mean we should settle for almost every student? How about a whole lot of students? Can we settle for serving just the students that care? I don’t feel that we can.

To settle for “close enough'”doesn’t cut it with either Jeremy Smith or myself. In fact, there have been nights we have worked long hours trying to find out how to do it better. Smith has often asked me, “How do we help the student who doesn’t care? Should we even worry about that? What can we do to make it easier for those who want to be involved, but don’t know how? I’m not really sure on these answers. God’s going to have to help us out on this one.”

And slowly but surely, an idea formed. Then after some time it has worked its way into a plan-I call it “the Big Shake-Up.” This plan would allow any student group, such as Essence of Ebony or S.A.L.T., an equal opportunity to use the students’ activity fee. Currently, the money first goes to groups that happen to bear the title of ‘SA’ and then what’s left over can go to the remaining student groups. I would personally like to see the best ideas for student activities and student involvement get the money, regardless of whether they bear the title of ‘SA’. This plan would make use of amazing faculty members, such as Mark Lewis and Nancy Coburn, who wish to help student groups excel. This plan wants to make it someone’s responsibility to listen to the students’ needs, and then DO something about them.

The Students’ Association does a lot of activities-several of them you might not even know or even care about. Many of them are great activities. But we (Smith and I) do not believe the Students’ Association can hold tight to (and hide behind) a couple of great activities and claim to be serving the students. Instead, let’s actually do what we can to make ACU a better place to go to school.

So that’s what we are now going to try to do. But we cannot make anyone else try to serve the student body better. And if members of the SA congress are happy with what they do now, we can’t change their minds. But neither of us are interested in leading an organization that claims to serve the students yet doesn’t give them their all.

Serve the students. All the students. I’m going to try to do just that. So let me know how I can do it for you. Better yet…let me know if you want to help out.

Find someone who you elected to represent you, a class officer or representative. Let them know you support this plan, and urge them to support it too. We want to work for you, and now we need your help.

-Jeremy Gordon
senior finance major and Students’ Association executive vice president