Ash West, the president of the Student Government Association, said that SGA is progressively enhancing its administration in order to better represent students and improve campus awareness of student government.
During last spring’s 2005 election, in which West was elected president, only 314 voted out of 14,083 enrolled students. To increase voting as well as students involvement in SGA, West has taken steps toward getting an accessible SGA Web site that “will be able to reach a lot more students, instead of just having one polling station.”
According to West, the percentage of students voting is at 2 percent. SGA Web site consultants have informed West that the percentage will increase to 6%. West maintains the low turnout is average for a community college.
“Sadly enough, that is actually the nationwide average for community colleges. At least were at par,” he said.
According to Erica Grall, student trustee, student apathy has do to with the types of lives community college students lead.
“Not as many students know about us as we would like. People do their classes, they go home… they do their life,” she said. “If we had dorms here it would be different, because they’d be here and know what is going on.”
Aside from campus detachment being a common quality among community colleges, West points to the fact that students identify SGA with a club as one of leading reasons why SGA goes overlooked. In light of that, the SGA members tried to address that issue when they were composing a new constitution last year.
“When we created a new constitution last year, one of the things we made sure to deemphasize was the activities part,” he said. “Now the activities board runs all the activities on campus, and that consists of all our clubs on campus. It made the clubs a little more responsible, and I think it gave them what they were asking for, which is more of a voice in the planning of activities.”
Constitutional modifications and innovative advertising techniques were strategies West proposed to use to draw students to SGA. West also wants to make BC aware of the purpose of student government.
“Students at community colleges don’t know they have rights, and they don’t even realize they can be represented to the professors and the administrators on an equal level,” he said. “There’s something called the Shared Governess Process, which guarantees that administrators, faculty, and students have an equal voice. Students may not have an equal vote, but at least enough to get their voices heard.”
The Rip asked seven students at random if they’ve heard of SGA. Three said they had.
“I guess it’s somewhat important. I just come to school,” said Jesse Meza, 22, art major. And Omar Hill, 19, business major, said, ” I think they need to do something to get my attention.”
But others found value with student government.
Terese Siate 21, interior design major, said “I’ve heard of it. A lot of people don’t know what student government controls. They do make a lot of decisions. If they took away student government, things would be defiantly different.”
Stacy Odam, 19, correctional administration, said “I know what student government is. They make a lot of things available for students. I think it’s important to vote in their elections.
“All these people around here are bitching and moaning about things they don’t have when, in fact, they can have them if they vote. They have that option to do whatever they want, and they’re taking the lazy way out and doing nothing.”
West said support has been strong from BC administrators, which will help SGA achieve its goals.
“I want to change the mindset. It is easy to change the mind-set of students when they don’t think we exist, but the problem in the past has been the administrators,” he said. “Past student advisers have been very controlling and haven’t always acted in the interest of students. This year Don Turney is our dean of students once again, and he is 100 percent behind the students.”