SGA Elections: We need a change

What has SGA done for you? What has SGA done for you lately? 

Those are two very similar questions with two very different answers in our opinion. Historically, the Student Government Association at Southern Miss has been very active. Our favorite example of this happened in 1982, when one determined SGA president and an involved student body made the push for a Mardi Gras holiday, a break that is still being observed more than 30 years later. When Dr. Aubrey K. Lucas first approved the Mardi Gras break, it was a one-day holiday. Years later, another eager SGA president came on board, and the break was extended to two days.

SGA was also responsible for the construction of the Payne Center on campus, a place that many students couldn’t imagine their lives without today.

When we look back at the history of Southern Miss, it seems that SGA has played a significant role in the development of the university, which brings us back to our original question: what has SGA done lately?

Aside from knowing about Eaglepalooza, most students can’t even tell you what the role of student government is on campus. Many don’t know that SGA has meetings and passes legislation. But our question is, what have those meetings been about in the past few years? 

We aren’t demanding that SGA provide us with another holiday or a brand-new facility on campus, but we do think the organization that is the so-called “voice of the student body” should be a little more active. 

So how should we go about fixing this problem? All the candidates we’ve seen in the past few years have had something in common, a promise for change. However, we haven’t seen that change. 

The Student Printz editors feel that in order to restore SGA to its full potential, a change needs to occur within the organization. Two candidates stood out to us in terms of the possibility of bringing about that change: Ann Marie Chilcutt for president and Owen Terry for vice president. 

These two have not previously been involved with SGA, and we feel that it is a good thing. In order to bring fresh insight to the organization, we need people free from the influences of their experiences within the broken system we have now. 

Though our suggestion is a Chilcutt/Terry ticket, the most important thing to remember today is just to vote. The previous SGA administrations who got us a break and a fitness center couldn’t do anything without the help of an involved student body, and the upcoming administration can’t either.