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TechNews | Tuesday, March 29th, 201 6

 

  

Why I'm running for SGA Executive Vice President

Soren Spicknall
TECHNEWS WRITER

 

Phntn cnurtesy 0f Snren Spicknall

In the time since I last wrote an
opinion piece for TechNews, I’ve learned
a great deal. That article, titled “Let’s Kill
Cynicism Before It Kills This Campus", started
a conversation that helped me reethink my
preconceived notions of student input and
involvement, and to see the issues from the
eyes of those whose experiences here at Illinois
Tech haven’t been as positive as my own. I have
spent a great deal of mytime at this university as
an advocate for others, starting as 3 Residence
Hall Association Floor Representative during
the first semester of my Freshman year, but
many of the channels made available to me for
advocacy have failed to address the needs of a
great number of students.

I have decided to pursue a campaign
for Executive Vice President of Illinois Tech’s
Student Government Association in order
to make sure that everybody’s voice is heard
and seriously considered, regardless of the
platforms they use to speak or the aims of
their efforts. The students here deserve an
SGA that reflects true public opinion in its
initiatives, composed of Senators who are real
representatives of their constituents’ opinions
in their actions and votes. I believe that SGA
has the potential to create meaningful change
on a large scale, and that we’ve made real
progress in the last couple semesters toward
those aims. However, there are alarge number
of legitimate problems within the organization,
and the Executive VP position is unique in its
ability to address those problems. Working
together openly with every one of you, I hope
I can be part of an Executive Board that will
drive SGA to be the responsive, efiicient, and
receptive organization we all want it to be.

My first direct experiences with
SGA were extremely different from each other,
one very negative and another very positive.
In the Fall of 2015, WIIT (for whom I was
Music Director at the time) and TechNews
(for whom I was a writer) were approached by
SGA’s Communications Committee to inform
us that they would be forming an organization
called Media Advisory Board, which was
tasked with choosing the leaders of those two
groups. This organization was put in place
at the request of the university, following a
controversial selection process the previous
year which had been directed by OCL. While
handing over some control to a studenteled
group was theoretically a move in the right
direction, SGA seemed to simply accept this
task without questioning whether it was in the
interests of the students who they represented.
The first time Media Advisory Board met (with
representatives present from most of thelargest
student organizations on campus), the majority
of those invited agreed that the mandate to
choose a student organization’s leadership set a
dangerous precedent, and that there seemed to
be no point in MAB exercising that power. In
the end, WIIT and TechNews both negotiated
leadership selection processes which turned
most of the control back over to themselves,
but the mere fact that they were brought to the
table with such a confrontational, unpopular
mandate in the first place reflected poorly on
SGA’s status as a body representative of the
university’s students. Instead of advocating
for the rights of these organizations to choose
their own leadership like any other group
on campus, the individuals who formed
Media Advisory Board simply took on a duty
requested by administration, despite the fact
that the majority of those from outside SGA
who were aware of MAB disagreed with its
mandate.

At the same time as the MAB

debacle, I was learning that much of SGA’s
work was positive and open in nature for all
students who wished to have input. As the
Dining Chair for RHA, I joined the Food
Advisory Board in Fall of 2015, headed at
the time by Ricky Stevenson, who was a
member of SGA’s Student Life committee.
That organization served as a liaison between
unfiltered student input and actionable steps
toward greater food quality and service at
Sodexo locations around campus. Established
as an initiative of SGA, Food Advisory Board
brought four administrative members of
Illinois Tech Dining to the table along with
representatives of RGL, OCL, RHA, and SGA,
as well as any student who wished to come
voice their opinion during its meetings. Every
other Friday, those who participated in Food
Advisory Board were given the power to
make decisions about options and issues that
were brought forth by students, with every
representative member present understanding
that the opinions they presented were not those
of themselves, but those of the students they
were speaking for In the Fall 2015 semester
alone, Food Advisory Board made sure that
Sodexo was publicizing its Meal Exchange
program, expanded available vegetarian
options, and directly addressed customer
service issues with specific employees in the
Commons and beyond. It was an example of
the kind of work that SGA should be doing in
all its activities, using its power as “the voice
of the students" to push for popular, well,
thoughteout changes at a table with those who
directly oversaw that facet of student life.

After participating in (or being
impacted by) various SGA subgroups and
projects during my first year and a half on
campus, I joined the organization as a Senator
to become a voice for the students of the
College of Science and learn more about its
internal culture. I found a group of some of
the most dedicated students on this campus,
all of whom truly have the best interests of the
student body at heart, but I also found some
sources of the type of illeconsidered decision,
making that SGA (and some of its sub,
organizations, like Finance Board) has earned
a reputation for at times. Many of the problems
I’ve seen can be traced back to cultural norms
within SGA which I believe the Executive Vice
President has the power to shift in a more
positive, democratic direction, and I hope to
be the person to oversee that shift.

In the current SGA Senate, there
is very little emphasis on the fact that each
Senator is elected as a representative of their
College (or, in special cases, their student
organization). Section 4.3.2 of the SGA
bylaws state that “a Senator shall always offer
legislation, debate, vote, and act according
to the interests, concerns, and requests of his
constituency", but there has not been a single
time this semester when I have witnessed
a Senator directly referencing the views of
their constituents in debate or discussion. I
am guilty of this behavior along with much
of the rest of the Senate: there simply isn’t
currently a legislative atmosphere which
promotes representation over personal views.
This doesn’t mean that any individual Senator
is acting selfishly or that their projects aren’t
intended to benefit their constituents, but it
does lead to a lack ofdirect consultation or open
input from noneSenators. As SGA’s Executive
VP, I would be responsible for the Senate’s
general organization and the principles set
forth at the beginning of each session. In that
role, I would put a great deal of focus on the
importance of representative service, and set
forth an expectation that Senators seek active
input from their constituents throughout their
term.

In addition to encouraging Senators
to actively seek input from their constituents,
I believe that a hugely important step toward
revitalizing SGA is to seek input from
stakeholders in our projects at every stage of
planning. While there are many SGA projects
that do this well, there are countless others
that bring in external voices far too late in the
process. Sometimes this can be disastrous,
especially when a Senator or volunteer spends
a great deal of time on a single project only
to be given a stern and concise “no" when
they present their final product to the people
impacted. Even at best, a project without
external input leads to imperfect results, such

as with the recent launch of the HAWKi app,
which should have likely had some sort of
public testing and input far prior to publication
The app itself is generally functional, but
opening the testing pool to all students could
have ensured that some of its current problems
and quirks could have been addressed before
now

Most important of all the reasons
I’m running, though, and something that
I believe distinguishes me from other
candidates, is a matter of philosophy The
nature of the Senate requires that its members
are typically those who are most involved in
student life, and those most willng to take on
traditional leadership roles (and have faith in
the impact of those roles). We typically have
regular access to a number of resources that
the average student doesn’t know exist, and
we know the “right" steps to take to have
concerns addressed when they arise. For that
reason, some Senators have a tendency to be
dismissive of those who bring forward their
concerns through nonetraditional means like
the ITSC Facebook group or through protest.
Though those methods aren’t necessarily the
“correct" way of offering input or the most
efficient manner of making change, I believe
they should never be disregarded as invalid.

The reality that some students prefer
nontraditional outlets for actiondoes not mean
that their opinions should not be represented
in SGA, and it demonstrates an environment
in which many students don’t know who to go
to when they want to get something addressed.
SGA needs to always keep those realities in
mind, and work hard to be a positive force
connecting frustrated students to sources of
change. And when necessary, we need to make
change ourselves for those who don’t have the
time or the resources to do it themselves, but
who care deeply enough about the issues to try
to make their voices heard. I have been both
an outsider and a participant when it comes
to SGA matters, and I want to use the role of
Executive VP to make sure that students can
connect to our projects at every level. Some
of our brightest and most passionate students
choose to focus on academics alone, but when
those students have a problem to bring forth,
SGA needs to be there to help them through a
productive dialog that’s just as clear and open
to firstetime participants as it is for the SGA
President.

Much of my platform deals in
organizational culture and philosophy, but my
track record proves that I am equally capable of
putting specific action behind my ramblings.
I was the sole author of WIIT’s revised
constitution after its Executive Board structure
was reeestablished last year, and I have worked
tirelessly to bring that organization back to the
forefront of visibility and event curation on this
campus. Through my positions in RHA, I have
made policy decisions and advised changes
to residence halls and dining, bringing that
organization’s constitution up to date as well.
Writing for TechNews, I’ve taken the initiative
to attend meetings of the Undergraduate
Studies Committee and other groups which
have a great deal of impact on our students,
and to bring information from those meetings
to the view of all those affected. In each of
those positions, I’ve communicated openly
with everyone who wanted to give advice or
input, and sought new methods of input to
make sure that my efforts reflected what the
student body truly wanted. I hope I can bring
that approach to SGA, serving as an advocate
for this university’s students and ushering in
a year of engaged projects and initiatives that
address the needs of our constituents before all
else.

But I can’t do it without your help,
and I really mean that when I say it SGA’s
Executive Board elections had a shockingly
low turnout of 6% of students last year,
meaning that individual votes truly did matter
While I sincerely hope that the Executive
Elections Committee inspires higher turnout
this year, it’s possible that your vote could still
make or break a campaign, no matter how
many individuals participate. I encourage you
to inform yourself about everyone running,
attend the SGA debates next week, and vote
for your interests between April 4th and April
6th. And of course, I hope you consider my
platform and make me your next Executive
Vice President.