Student opinion of SGA

3/13/08

By Matt Vercillo
Critic Staff

The problem with being asked to write a column on the SGA, is that I really wasn’t sure exactly what the SGA was. After a few minutes of consideration, I figured that it was most likely an acronym for Student Government Association. I had never bothered to give it any thought.

I was a little concerned that after being a student at LSC for an honest five years or so, I had relatively no recollection of any SGA members or anything they did, besides a faint memory of an impeachment due to the personal hygiene of the president.

This one event, and the words represented in their acronym; were the limits of my knowledge.

The extent of my research consisted of a fairly thorough inspection of the Lyndon State College Web site, from which I found a few basic principles. Rather than spending an hour trying to navigate the page’s intricate web of menus and tabs, I simply typed SGA into the search box, which brought me the SGA page as the first result.

The specific page can be found at this address

The information was somewhat confusing, due to a strange layout consisting of a paragraph with a few loose bullets tacked oddly on the end like afterthoughts. Copied and pasted word for word it says the following:

“The purpose of the SGA is to promote the educational, social, and general welfare of the students of Lyndon State College. The SGA serves all members of the student body.

- To anticipate and stimulate the interests of the students through the use of student run clubs, and activities.

- To distribute and use the money acquired by the Student Activities Fee for the benefit of the LSC student body.

- To speak on the behalf of the students by presenting student opinion to the faculty, staff, and administration of Lyndon State College.”

The first paragraph seems like an explanation, and the bulleted statements appear to be goals or initiatives. Great, so now I had the vague, public relation type answer, but I wanted to know more specifically what they had done for my welfare during my long and industrious career as a member of the student body. Especially since now, I was aware that the SGA was in charge of distributing the Student Activities Fee. The fee is 188 dollars per semester for full-time undergraduate students.

I couldn’t remember ever being intrigued by any activities on campus and wondered where my money had gone.

So, rather than going through any more conventional or legitimate means of attaining knowledge about the club, I decided to ask around and collect a popular opinion of the SGA from some fellow students. I started by asking people to tell me what the SGA was, and everything they knew about it.

All of the students I interviewed seemed about as informed as I was.

“I’m not really sure, I thought that they had something to do with the events planned on campus...or is that CAB?” remarked senior Joe Gelinas, “What’s the difference? There are never any good events anyway. Someone should actually try and figure out what the students want before they plan events.”

The more I asked around, I seemed to get most of the same sentiments. It was becoming clear that even though the SGA obviously did something around here, the general public was relatively clueless about their contributions.

“What’s the SGA?” said senior Gerrin Goodwin. “Oh wait, is it the Gay Straight Alliance...no, no that’s the GSA. Oh yea, Student Government, right?”

I informed him that he was correct.

“The only thing I remember is the whole impeachment thing. He was weird and smelled bad. It doesn’t seem like they do a lot for us, and if they do I don’t know what it is.”

Now it was clear to me that I wasn’t the only one in the dark about all this. Nobody I asked could even name the SGA President (I couldn’t either until I started writing this).

It was getting towards deadline and still I couldn’t find any students with any useful information about the SGA. I decided to give up; it felt like it could be days, weeks, or even months before I found a student that was in the know.

So, I found out what the SGA was, but never pinpointed exactly what they do, except that supposedly they do something.

If this agonizing search for knowledge has taught me anything about the SGA it’s that they need to be more public with their procedures, decisions, and actions. Maybe, as students we carry a certain degree of responsibility towards knowing how things like this work within our academic community. So it’s possible, that it could be my own fault that I was so uninformed.

All I know is that as I sit here staring into a cooling bowl of ramen noodles and sipping a lukewarm glass of tap water, I sure wish I had $188 right now.