Sophomores Austin Goss and Denny Lee are running for Student Government president and vice-president, respectively, in an attempt to make the organization more fiscally responsible and transparent.
While the SG executive board traditionally receives tuition wavers and stipends, Goss and Lee said they will refuse this compensation.
“We’re not going to take a dime, and neither is anyone that works for us,” Goss said. “There are people here who could use it way more than us.”
Lee said SG overspends their budget and does not tell the student body where money is going.
“We don’t know what’s going on,” Lee said. “They just make these decisions on their own. We might have voted for them, but we don’t really have a say.”
Goss, a government and political communication sophomore, said they plan to use the money to set up a fund to mitigate the $20 financial burden of transcripts for students.
“There’s not much that can be done unless we take that initiative and put money aside,” Goss said. “Right out of the gate, our best chance to get something done on campus is through taking that (money) and putting that in a transcript fund.”
The Goss-Lee alliance also said SG meetings — which are open to the public, live-broadcasted on Facebook and have legislation posted on the SG website — should be more transparent. They hope to increase the visibility of the legislative process by publishing summaries of each meeting’s work on social media, Lee said.
“I think that Student Government doesn’t really work out well (because) it doesn’t really do anything,” said Lee, a petroleum engineering sophomore. “We want to change that and make sure everybody knows what’s going on inside the Student Government.”
Goss said SG also has attendance policies that are too lenient, allowing representatives to skip meetings without consequence.
“We’d like to enact a ‘two strikes you’re out’ idea, so if you don’t show up to two meetings, you’re done, unless you have an excuse or a doctor’s note,” Goss said.
Goss said they also want to dissociate the University’s connection with Greek life in response to hazing incidents at other campuses that have garnered national attention.
“I just think (Greek life has) come under a lot of controversy,” Goss said. “I just don’t see why our University needs to be involved with them.”
