SGA tries out new format in first election of the year

By Alicia Takacs, Staff Writer

Published Sep 25, 2023

The Chambers is where SGA and Faculty Senate normally convene for their meetings. (Heesoo Yang/Staff Photographer)

TCU’s Student Government Association held its first election cycle of the new school year on Sept. 7.

The student body elected 56 seats to the 2023-2024 school year’s House of Representatives, the main body of SGA.

This is the first year SGA has seats for each academic college. In the past, the student body has elected representatives by their respective class. Students vote on who they want to represent their academic college and its needs during the school year.

Cullen Steward, SGA’s election board chair, explained the change from class representatives.

“We got rid of the class seats because we felt that it wasn’t an accurate representation,” Steward said.

The Brown Lupton University Union stairs, the front of the student union at TCU. — The Brown Lupton University Union houses the TCU Chambers, where SGA holds its weekly meetings. (TCU Conference Services)

Steward is a senior finance major from New Hampshire and a part of the TCU men’s club lacrosse team. He is also a Neeley School of Business representative in this year’s House of Representatives.

Steward believes the different representation and moving elections to the fall will benefit TCU’s student body.

“Moving the elections to the fall is when everyone is more driven and really want to get involved,” said Steward. “We saw that with the number of applicants we got compared to past years.

With better overall student representation, Steward has high hopes for SGA this school year.

“Having good representation around campus without the class seats really represents just the colleges instead of each class,” said Steward. It represents the needs of all students, rather than just a specific year,” Steward said.

Steward also described the goals of SGA this year and their initiatives. Those include a campus convenience store, more mental health resources and more campus affairs initiatives.

“I’m really excited about the House in general,” Steward said. “We had a big turnover, which will be good for coming up with new, diverse ideas and different perspectives we haven’t had in the past.”