The Voice speaks to members of SGA and CC following largely uncontested elections for 2019-2020 academic year
Mackenzie Clark
Editor in Chief
With all of the emails, surveys and applications, it can be easy to lose track of what’s going on with Wooster’s student government as the groups transition from one year to the next. A fact that many students might have missed: almost all of your student government representatives for the upcoming academic year ran in uncontested elections.
The College has two seperate student government organizations: the Student Government Association (SGA) and Campus Council (CC).
In this year’s SGA election, 15 students ran for 20 seats, leaving five vacancies after the initial uncontested election. Although there appeared to be little interest in SGA, interest in the group spiked when 27 students applied to fill those last five vacancies. Three out of the four executive board positions for SGA were also uncontested, meaning that the only member of SGA who was elected in a contested candidacy was the position of president, for which two students ran. Struggles with getting students involved in SGA aren’t unique to this election. This past year, the senate had a nearly 50 percent turnover rate over the course of the term.
In CC’s elections, four out of the nine councilmembers who were elected to next year’s term also ran uncontested. To learn more about the factors playing into the lack of candidates in student government on campus, as well as struggles with retention during the academic year, the Voice spoke with members of CC and SGA.
One factor many members of both organizations noted was the campus community’s occasionally misinformed perceptions of CC and SGA.
Annabelle Hopkins ’19, the current CC chair and a previous member of SGA, defines CC as a legislative and governing body of 18 members, half of whom are elected students and half are representatives from the College’s staff, faculty and administration. “Campus Council is designed to represent the entirety of the campus community,” stated Hopkins. “We influence campus-wide change through writing policy in the Scot’s Key, offering recommendations to various departments on campus and having broader dialogues with administrators.”
SGA Treasurer Isaac Weiss ’20 defines SGA as an advocacy-based body of four executive board members and 20 senators, with five representatives from each rising class year and five representing the entire student population.
Although these groups may seem similar in structure and purpose, they have distinct roles on Wooster’s campus. The campus-wide understanding of these roles, however, can be easily misinformed and result in an unbiased hierarchy that can incorrectly prioritize CC.
“In terms of hierarchy, understanding the respective bodies’ purpose is important, and I think those distinctions are not well known,” said previous CC Chair Jordan Griffith ’19. “These groups are co-equal independent groups. Council is designed to represent the entire campus and use both its soft and hard power to advocate for and legislate changes. Its highest power is the Board of Trustees. SGA’s all-student-composition gives it the ability to make a variety of changes to improve student life.”
Misconceptions about the roles of CC and SGA have been suggested to have influence on the success of each group’s elections. Olivia Proe ’21, who served as an SGA senator this past year, initially ran for CC and upon losing that election was encouraged to run for SGA. “Generally, I think the reputation on campus is that SGA is ‘CC Jr.’ That makes it feel like what SGA is doing is more trivial, especially because it’s an all-student body,” said Proe.
This suggested perception of SGA on campus may be a factor in why so few students run for office and how so many senate seats are uncontested each year.
“Running uncontested may be a lot less stressful for those on the ballot, but I find it concerning that out of 2,000 students we can only get 15 people interested in representing the student body,” said SGA Senator Grace O’Leary ’20. “To me that means that people are not truly engaged in the community and the issues that we face.”
While not many students run in the initial election, historically students show more interest in the application process for the seats which were left unfilled. “I think we receive such a large influx of applications because it presents students with a second opportunity to reconsider if they should run or not. It’s also a less imitating way to run because its application based versus a public elected vote,” said Reagan Kazyak ’19, SGA vice president from this past year.
Griffith noted that in the past, students have shows more interested in running for CC in the aftermath of “hot button issues” on campus, such as the suspension of fraternity Phi Omega Sigma or the Galpin Call-in last January. “I think those patterns are reflective of Council’s role as a change-making body,” said Griffith.
Members of SGA and CC also expressed that a lack of transparency about the amount of effort and work required to be involved in student government could be a contributing factor to a low retention rate within the term. Monét Davis ‘19 initially got involved with SGA through the First Year Governance Council (FYGC) and went on to serve two terms as an at-large senator before being elected as president of SGA. Davis ran in contested elections her first year and sophomore year, but noted a drop in people running her junior year. “I think it’s definitely unfortunate when senators are running uncontested, which happened with the senate that I was president for,” said Davis.
“I think that this is a troubling pattern,” said Weiss. “We should always have contested races, so that the students can choose who they think is best for the job. Certainly, it must also be the case that we address the idea of retention. I personally think there are a myriad of reasons people leave or don’t return. It could be leadership, especially when there is a high turnover rate within SGA throughout the school year, but it could also be a lack of knowledge. I think many senators join SGA thinking that it’s one thing, when it really isn’t the way that they think it’s going to be; educating the student body about what we do is the way to correct this specific wrong.”
“They joke about it, like, ‘it’s a tradition.’ People will drop and people will leave because they either don’t realize what a massive commitment it is or they get burned out or have some sort of personality conflict with the people above them,” said Proe. “This year, it was a probably a combination of all of that. Mental health is something that also plays into it. We overload ourselves… People freak out and drop because they don’t realize coming into it the enormity of the work you have to put into it.”
In her case, Proe chose not to return to SGA next year both for logistical reasons related to going abroad and a feeling of being burnt out after the full term. “People who are younger see [SGA] as avenue to make their ideas happen,” continued Proe. “You can make suggestions, but you don’t have leverage. As you get older, you get more jaded, and that’s why interest drops off.”
Members of CC and SGA also cited potential structural issues unique to each organization as factors in the suggested negative perception of student government by the campus community.
“Certainly, I think that SGA can do a good job, but that’s completely dependent on students knowing what they want to do, knowing how to do it, and having the drive to do it,” said Weiss. “With bad leadership, we can be an incredibly ineffective body. A bad leader can make students lose their hopes for SGA, and they can be a tremendous road block on the path to making students lives easier. Our failure to do a good job, can result in a lot of pain for students.”
O’Leary and Hopkins both pointed to the lack of onboarding process in both CC and SGA as a structural issue for each group.
“I think one of the biggest issues with SGA is that every new term is like starting with a clean slate,” explained O’Leary. The onboarding process is basically nonexistent and overwhelming for the new senators. I think that there needs to be a clear transfer of information from one year to the next.”
“There is no onboarding process for CC — rather, members are simply thrown into things in the Fall,” said Hopkins. “This year, we have developed a brand new plan for onboarding that involves pairing up incoming and outgoing members, giving small roles to incoming members, requiring attendance at certain CC meetings, and also building relationships between incoming members early on. I have said since the beginning of this term that I wanted to focus on relationships. This can be seen in nearly everything we have done this year, including this new onboarding process.”
Moving forward, CC and SGA are both looking to address these issues surrounding their distinct identities, the clarity of their roles on campus and internal issues relating to structure in order to increase the number of candidates running in contested elections in the future. Members of both groups have pointed out their outreach and community engagement efforts over this academic year were not well attended by the student body.
“I’m hoping that a restructure of SGA could allow SGA to serve its initial purpose of advocating for the student body,” said Kazyak. “Although we table and always ask for suggestions, it doesn’t seem like this is an effective way of communicating with the student body and my hope would be that a restructure could allow for a more effective way of helping our fellow students.”
SGA Senator Samuel Casey ’21 stated he would like to see the student body engage more directly with SGA. “SGA holds meetings every Wednesday in Lowry at 8 p.m. and no one ever comes,” said Casey. “If people are concerned about what SGA is doing or saying they don’t want to run because they don’t know what SGA is, then that is no ones fault but their own. There is an opportunity every single week to provide your voice or to see what the experience is like if you are interested in running.”
Casey also mentioned that SGA and CC recently held a joint panel to explain the distinctions between each organization, but barely anyone showed up. “If we are doing everything is our power to be helpful and transparent, then the problem is just a lack of accountability,” said Casey. “ I think SGA needs to try to solicit feedback from the students about the exact reasons why they do not run in the elections in order to make adequate changes.”
In the case of CC, Griffith emphasized the importance of recruitment leading up to election season. “As is the case with a number of the Councilmembers past and present, the idea of running in an election may not be appealing, but the work that a Councilmember actually does may be,” said Griffith. “In that case, I think Councilmembers have the responsibility to consider who would be good at the job and reach out to them.”
Kazyak stressed the importance of transparency. “I think it’s essential to continue to be transparent with the student body and continually ask, ‘How do you want to be represented? What can SGA do to continue to advocate for your voice?’ If we focus on these questions, then hopefully we can create concrete solutions and with the new SGA Executive Board, I have complete confidence in their ability to do so,” said Kazyak.
Weiss has proposed a specific plan for a year-long institutional review of student government at Wooster, a process which was done in the 1980s.
“When I was cleaning up the SGA room, I stumbled across some paperwork regarding a memo that Campus Council had sent then President Copeland,” explained Weiss. “Campus Council had elected to dissolve themselves in the 1980’s. President Copeland, however, in his response letter admitted that this was a ridiculous idea and instead elected to form a committee to review the structure of student governance and make a recommendation for institutional changes. This committee, in fact, cause CC to no longer be a subsidiary of SGA and helped it to become its own form of government.”
“As time when on, I continued to think about that committee,” continued Weiss. “I didn’t see any reason why we should reform that committee every so often to institute a review of Campus Council and SGA. Even if no changes come from it, it’s important to ensure that the structure and role of these two groups are conducive to a productive governance structure. My hope is that any change that comes from such a committee will result in a more productive and more effective student governance on campus.”