The Student Government Association rejected a bill to establish caucuses within SGA and approved a bill to change the credit hours needed to qualify for student body vice president Tuesday night.Lindsay Beattie, elections and regulations chair, said she introduced a bill to create caucuses in an effort to have all representatives in a constituency get to know each other better and get more work done.
“Hopefully this will get people working on legislation a little bit more,” said Beattie, a senior English major, before the bill was rejected.
Another portion of that bill would have required the caucuses to meet every two weeks, but David Young, a senior entrepreneurial management major and SGA member, said he feels meeting that often is unnecessary.
“I think it would be more effective to have less meetings,” Young said. “It allows more flexibility within the members.”
After the first vote of the evening, SGA Vice President Jace Thompson introduced a bill to amend the credit hour requirement for a student body vice president candidate, which he said would allow more people to run for the position.
Before this bill was passed, all candidates were required to have the same qualifications as candidates for SGA president. These qualifications require candidates to be members of the undergraduate student body, have attended the university for a minimum of three full semesters, have a minimum GPA of 2.5, have served a minimum of one semester in SGA and have completed 60 credit hours. The accepted bill now reduces the required credit hours for the vice president from 60 hours to 45 hours.
“This bill is simply allowing the vice president of the student body to not have to have 60 hours to run,” said Thompson, a junior entrepreneurial management major.
However, he said a candidate for vice president will still have to meet all of the other requirements.
“More people running for student body positions will have better competition and better leaders at those positions,” he said.