By the time the spring Student Government Association (SGA) election closed on April 15, Smithies’ email inboxes had been inundated with announcements, invitations and reminders to vote. Many of these emails were from the SGA Elections and Appointments Chair, Erin Quick ’24. Quick’s emails were urgent yet casually written, calling for more students to announce candidacy and later to vote. This, along with the vacant ballot for 2024 class president, brought the state of SGA participation to students’ attention.
“Historically we have had every position filled and contested,” Quick said, specifically in response to the junior class presidency, though she went on to explain that this election wasn’t too anomalous. According to Quick, registration tends to skyrocket in the fall with new first years and spring elections are always a little more sparse. Emily Paule ’22, current SGA president, pointed out strong interest in higher commitment positions. “I feel somewhat encouraged that the presidency, vice-presidency and chief of staff positions are contested, that doesn’t always happen.”
This said, the SGA’s concerns about attracting new members isn’t all about raw numbers. “There have been a lot of concerns raised in senate meetings about the lack of diversity in SGA, and that ties into student participation and the question of who’s participating, and why, and how,” explained Leela De Paula ’23, SGA president-elect and co-founder of the Advocacy for Equity Council. Entangled in this question about participation are issues such as SGA’s capacity for institutional change, the time commitment of student leadership and the crucial role SGA plays in student life.
Something that is seen as either a motivator or deterrent for those joining SGA is its relationship to institutional change at Smith College. Many current members expressed ambitions to make Smith a better place before joining, and seeing those goals come to fruition is a fulfilling part of the position. Some examples of success included spearheading the Ozzie containers, raising money for Common Goods and representing students in negotiations with administrators.
However, this change exists against the backdrop of a broader narrative about the efficacy of SGA held by the student body. Many interviewees mentioned critiques of SGA being an “echo-chamber,” “sitting around talking about change” and “being play-time for government majors.” But many SGA members expressed that this perception of inaction doesn’t tell a full story. “Looking from an outside perspective, you don’t see the back and forth [between student representatives and administration],” Quick said.
Quick, along with all of my interviewees, also cited this “back and forth” as one of the more challenging aspects of being a member of SGA, which lends some truth to the student body’s hesitations. “There are some amazing people in administration that truly want to see change on campus,” De Paula said. “However the structure itself is built to resist change…There are many barriers between students’ experiences and administrative action.” She described how paperwork, meetings and waiting on committee decisions are cumbersome for full-time students and ultimately obscure the urgency of any situation.
A student who asked to remain anonymous also described the impact of bureaucratic red-tape within SGA itself. “[SGA] seems so bound to formality that it makes you apathetic after some time. I understand that structure is necessary for things to flow, but it gets to a point where we’re just following all these bylaws that, will we ever get to the crux of solving what we want to solve?” She described feeling this apathetic attitude from other SGA members when she suggested that they collectively address salient issues on campus. Some of her suggestions were bringing up students of colors’ concerns about safety to administrators after white supremacists protested Pelosi on Elm Street and publicizing Title IX information after the article in the Sophian was posted. But, no one expressed deep interest or followed up, so they “fizzled out”.
The most distinct limiting factor for SGA participation is time commitment. “The most popular questions I received [about running for a position] have to do with time commitment,” said Quick. “Smithies are busy. They have a million things to do, they’re part of student organizations, they work, they study…” The higher commitment positions such as being on the SGA cabinet require 8-10 hours a week, around the same amount as a work-study job, but unlike work-study, SGA is unpaid.
Time commitment is also a reason that individuals leave SGA. One student said, “Due to the pressures I have as a work-study, low-income student, there definitely was an element of strife being part of SGA.” She went on to describe feeling uncomfortable in the organization due to having to miss meetings.
This pressure is reminiscent of the tensions that other unpaid student leaders have articulated in recent weeks. As house presidents stepped down from the House President Association and HONS resigned from their positions guiding students through their first year of college, both groups have expressed similar concerns with uncompensated work. It contributes to burn out, and limits the socio-economic diversity of student leadership.
“I see the future of SGA as incorporating more people, incorporating more opinions,” Quick said. “The senate is planning on doubling in size because it tends to be pretty low commitment, it’s 2-3 hours per week, because the philosophy that has evolved is that anybody who wants to join SGA should, and should be able to.”
Paule also commented on expansion, explaining that this spring SGA passed a bylaw changing the upper limit of the senate from 30 to 60 people. Students may have noticed this change on the latest ballot, where they were able to vote for 30 senators for the spring election instead of the regular 15. Involving more people in the senate would lead to more student input on how SGA allocates their budget for student organizations, which sits at a notable $1 million.
To many SGA members, this budget represents the collective resources that SGA can offer to students to enrich their time at Smith, such as funding community-focused events and connecting students to administrators. “A lot of us are relearning how to be in a community, how to work together, and what resources are available to make that happen,” said Aundrea Marschoun, incoming Ada Comstock social chair. “There’s so much potential, and people have so much need of feeling part of a group again.”
In terms of community building, many SGA members also discussed deepening the relationship between SGA and other student organizations beyond chartering. “In theory, all of these student orgs are a part of SGA,” Nell Adkins ’23, current SGA vice president, noted. “So there could be much more collaboration…which gets at how you actually have the impact you want to have, and that’s more people talking about the same thing.” She also noted that this power in numbers helps mitigate the limited bandwidth students have as a result of all of their obligations.
The anonymous ex-member of SGA also emphasized that this collaboration between SGA and student orgs needs to be consistent: “People can sense when it’s not very sincere, if the only time you’re trying to make that community is when you need diversity in your org or if you want people to vote.” De Paula agreed, saying that “Naturally, diverse students will be attracted to an organization that actually does something that has to do with their interests.”
Furthermore, De Paula expressed the need for an “attitude change” in SGA to lend gravity to the responsibilities of administering a $1 million budget and representing students to administrators. She said that “We need to have that solidarity and know that as students, as a collective, we have a power to influence big decisions much more than we’ve ever really imagined.” Overall, De Paula said “Courage needs to be revitalized and made a norm at Smith.”
