As the sole voice of the student body, SGA is meant to work with the administration and stand up for the needs of each and every student of UTSA. With their biweekly meetings and the invitation to email them with concerns on their website, SGA appears to be satisfied with the level of representation they provide. However, the most effective way to be a proper student government is for its elected members to actually stand for the people they are supposed to speak for, which is difficult when they conduct their elections in near secrecy.
The lack of voter turnout for SGA elections has been a recurring problem for the organization for years, with a lot of students not even being aware that they exist and many more having no idea how and when to vote. As SGA receives funding from the university collected from students’ pockets, they cannot continue to permit this type of disregard. SGA needs to focus its efforts on making sure that people know about them, care about them and participate in their elections.
The Fall 2024 SGA general elections were held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sept. 18 through Rowdylink, giving students a 12-hour window to vote. This timeline is inefficient because it disregards the schedules of students who may have a busy school day or work, immediately cutting out a considerable amount of the student population.
Not allowing even a full 24 hours of voting ensures that those unavailable are left out of the representative process, regardless that their money is still going to SGA when they pay their tuition and fees.
Furthermore, even if their pathetically short voting window could be excused, SGA barely advertised their elections and the nominees. On their official Instagram page, SGA made only one post concerning the elections, providing information on when and how to vote. Worse still, they posted it on the day of the elections, well into the voting window, showcasing an alarming lack of interest in getting people to participate.
At no point in the build-up towards election day did SGA table, post fliers, send emails or do anything at all to campaign and inform people about the elections. Students who were lucky enough to share a class or be in a student organization with someone running for a position might have been informed by that student, but the lack of formal campaigning is completely baffling.
Students could look into the candidates’ platforms as they were voting by clicking on blue icons next to their names, which severely undercuts the sincerity of the votes due to their hastiness and general uninformed nature.
SGA has made it clear they are interested in running as independently as they can, isolating themselves from the people they are supposed to represent and making no effort to improve no matter how many times their low voter turnouts are pointed out to them.
Students are wasting their money funding an organization that either does not care about them at all or is simply too incompetent to look at themselves and rework how they operate so they behave as an actual student government and not just another club.
To voice concerns about the way the SGA elections were conducted, students can fill out their feedback form on their website.
