{"id":3587,"date":"2017-10-08T04:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-08T08:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/?p=3587"},"modified":"2017-10-08T04:00:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T08:00:38","slug":"sga-amendment-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/2017\/10\/08\/sga-amendment-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"SGA Amendment Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY PETER YANG – STAFF WRITER\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In a vote ending on September 15th<\/sup>, the student body voted in favor of an amendment which would add six seats to SGA. While 68% of the student body voted, 57% of them voted in favor of it. This is a significant difference compared to the unanimous vote inside the SGA. The SGA Constitution has no requirement on the participation rate of the study body, but does require a majority vote in order to pass any amendment.<\/p>\n

The recommendation for the amendment was introduced when a senior representative, Lola Fakunle, proposed the idea to SGA last year. The council quickly began discussing options for the amendment and edited throughout all of March last year. As the amendment is defined, six organizations will now be guaranteed a seat on SGA: Diversity Student Union, International Student Association, Centre Pride, New Horizons, Posse, and Grissom. First, in order to have proper representation, each organization will nominate three candidates to SGA through internal processes. Next, the whole student body will vote on the chosen candidates for placement as an SGA representative.<\/p>\n

There has been significant controversy surrounding the amendment, which only increased after it passed. At the time of publication, a discrimination complaint has been filled for excluding religious groups and people with disabilities and is being reviewed by the administration. The amendment is waiting for a Board of Trustees\u2019 vote before it can be implemented in the spring. Students can expect to see representatives from those six organizations as early as the Spring election.<\/p>\n

President Kirby Fitzpatrick admitted that the turnout of the vote was lower than expected, noting that only 57% percent of those who voted were in favor of it. \u201cI\u2019m very excited about it,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it is definitely not going to do enough for SGA.\u201d In her email to the six groups after the vote, she stated, \u201cOur next step is outlining the time table of what is to come\u2026to brainstorm.\u201d She indicated that SGA has no schedule for further improvement and development of diversity at the moment, but will be working on it in the near future.<\/p>\n

Fitzpatrick assured that, \u201cSGA is going to have several discussions\u201d as soon as six representatives join the group in the spring semester. Fitzpatrick hopes that, \u201cthis amendment would give these groups more inspirations and feeling that they could do it.\u201d Kirby remains optimistic about this amendment. International Student Association Co-President Michelle Guo, another supporter among other student leaders on campus, asked international students to vote in an email: \u201cWe need half of the campus to vote ‘yes’ for the amendment to pass. Go vote and tell all your friends to vote too!\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Swan, the international student advisor, stated that he was neither in support for or against this amendment. First, he stated, \u201cI did not get enough information about the amendment from SGA.\u201d He believes that diversity is essential, but doubts that this would be the solution. He further explained, \u201cThere are about 110 international students on campus and roughly 85 of them are from China.\u201d Stephen is unsure how could one person represent all international students, \u201cespecially for those who are not from China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although there would be an international representative on SGA after the amendment, Stephen said it, \u201c may just bring us back to where we were before.\u201d Moreover, he stated, \u201cEvery person is an individual.\u201d He worries that the amendment might even further marginalize some students such as students from Germany, Korea, etc. His suggestion to SGA is to spend more time encouraging people with different backgrounds to run for office and educate people on what SGA does. As a staff member, he stays neutral on this amendment and would like to see more on how this amendment affects SGA\u2019s decisions and activities the future.<\/p>\n

Without doubt, this new amendment has sparked discussion among Centre students over the past few weeks. Kirby Fitzpatrick and the rest of SGA are eager to make important changes on campus. This new amendment may be a step in the right direction for increased diversity and inclusion on campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY PETER YANG – STAFF WRITER In a vote ending on September 15th, the student body voted in favor of an amendment which would add six seats to SGA. While 68% of the student body voted, 57% of them voted in favor of it. This is a significant difference compared to the unanimous vote inside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}