The UT San Antonio Student Government Association apparently takes pride in serving the student body — a fact that students would not know if the SGA did not insist on it. A representative government must act in its constituents’ interests and be transparent in the process. The SGA has failed the two metrics, being both inaccessible to students looking for involvement and ineffective in accomplishing its goals. If the SGA is supposed to be the “sole voice of student interests,” that voice is not much more than a squeak.
In prior years, the SGA posted its annual budget. Although their 2019-2020 budget contained several self-indulgent expenditures — $8,750 for officer stipends and $9,871.67 for a “summit” — a report was at least posted; students had a source to keep their government in check. Today, the association has closed its doors, with the last viewable budget coming out in 2023. The Paisano reached out to acquire a copy of the SGA’s most recent budget but received no reply.
Students pay $18.51 per semester credit hour to fund the student government, among other entities and services. The SGA Constitution enshrines minimum officer hours and stipends for high-ranking officers. Using those minimums, SGA pays its president up to $46.88 an hour, with other roles receiving between $15.63 and $39.01 per hour — wholly unjustifiable appropriations for a do-nothing student association.
In addition to concealing its budget, the SGA makes it difficult to know what it actually does. Its website is horribly outdated, as updates for information such as past election results ended in 2022. Furthermore, its “major initiatives” are vague at best, with little documentation proving progress is being made. SGA claims to take on issues like “improving campus dining” and making “more sustainable campus waste management,” but no records are available to measure what its initiatives have accomplished.
Even with these unceasing issues, the SGA still scratches its head as to why students do not participate in its organization. In a university of over 38,000, it is truly an impressively pathetic feat that a student government’s public GroupMe — where it shares meeting information — only has 100 members and that its voter participation in elections barely scrapes 2%. While it might be easy to say that students are unmotivated or disengaged, the presence of over 300 active student organizations and frequent campus protests say otherwise. Students clearly do not see the SGA as a place where they can make a difference.
The worst part is that the SGA knows all of this. The association has been called out over and over again, yet nothing improves. Whether it be ignorance or incompetence, the lack of progress is truly startling.
Students deserve a voice that shouts for their needs, not one that mumbles to itself in a corner of the Student Union. If SGA cannot follow through with its mission purpose, the middleman should be cut. Students should not pay a heightened fee for services the university can do itself.
