The Student Government Association conducts a Senate meeting, Sept. 19. The meeting attracted a large number of students. (Sam Difiore)

The Student Government Association started off the 2023-24 student senate year with a senate meeting Tuesday, Sept. 19 in BAC Lone Star. The room filled up quickly, with more than 40 students joining the meeting as organizers brought in additional chairs to accommodate everyone.

Political science senior and SGA president Zetta Cannedy said the meeting attracted more student representatives than any past meeting she could remember.

“I think it went super well. We have never had a turnout like this,” Cannedy said.

Cannedy attributed the large turnout to a coordinated effort by SGA leadership to contact student organizations and senators. She added that SGA also used the opportunity to seek feedback on where it could improve.

President Stacia Haynie speaks at the Senate meeting, Sept. 19. (Sam Difiore)

“Back in June, I made the effort to contact every single organization president as often as I could throughout the summer, to not only hear what their opinions are and what they think SGA can do better and what MSU can work on, but to also say, “Hey, y’all have, y’all need a senator and if you have a senator you can then qualify for student leadership funds.” And so I think that helped a lot,” Cannedy said.

The high turnout and emphasis on student feedback coincide with a slew of other changes in student government.

The SGA cabinet grew, particularly through the addition of the new SGA Supreme Court.

Cannedy explained that the new court will primarily be responsible for working with school administration on implementing any legislation the senate passes. 

“But most of all, we saw that one of our greatest, I’d say, fall-throughs of last year is that we, once the legislation passed the senate, we often just put it on the desk of an admin or that relevant person and said, “Here you go, we passed this and it’s your job to take it on.” And I don’t think that’s entirely fair for us to do,” Cannedy said.

Political science senior and SGA president Zetta Cannedy speaks about how students need to be a part in learning the constitution and how it affects the university, Sept. 19. (Sam Difiore)

Cannedy added that other supreme court duties will include overseeing election challenges and committees.

“So they’re going to do the Supreme Court things of, if there’s an appeal or protest of an election, they oversee that. If there’s a preceding where, if there’s a preceding to remove a senator from the senate, I don’t anticipate that happening, they also oversee that. They sit on committees, university committees, for SGA,” Cannedy said.

Another major change is the removal of student referendums for constitutional changes. Cannedy said doing so streamlines the governmental process, and that past referendums failed to generate substantial traction among students.

“We kind of feel like that slows down the process of SGA a lot, because we still can’t act, technically act under that official logo yet because it’s not in a past constitution, so we said “You know what, going forward we don’t really need the student referendum.” We oftentimes don’t get very good engagement with past student referendums so we just felt it wasn’t necessary anymore,” Cannedy said.

SGA aims for around 10% student engagement in referendums.

Cannedy said votes like SGA positions and homecoming elections frequently hit that mark, but referendums don’t see as much success. 

Instead, the new SGA administration hopes to generate more feedback from students via surveys pushed out through social media.

Cannedy said combining the surveys with sharing info about passed legislation is where SGA hopes to put its focus. She added that things like the SGA constitution can feel less important or impactful to students than the actual day-to-day achievements of the senate.

“And even as a student who wasn’t always SGA, if I was given the SGA constitution,I probably wouldn’t care about it. It’s not, even though it does represent the whole student body, it’s more about the inner workings of SGA, but I think it’s really more important for students to be hearing about the legislation than having constant SGA constitution changes,” Cannedy said. 

The next SGA senate meeting will be Tuesday, Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. in BAC Lone Star.

Vice President of Student Affairs Keith Lamb extends his appreciation to the students for attenting the meeting, Sept. 19. (Sam Difiore)