SGA's first semester: success or failure?

With the beginning of the spring semester underway, some students have begun reviewing the Student Government leaders' goals for their first semester of office. Joe Tyrrell, SGA president, believes many haven't been accomplished. "We always go in with lofty goals," Tyrrell said. "We understood we would never be able to realistically do what we wanted to do. What hurt was the state budget. A lot of the things we want to do cost money." Because of that, Tyrrell said many things weren't an option. It was important to Tyrrell to focus on projects that wouldn't be completed in a year. "We want to do long-term stuff that we wish other student governments in the past would have done," Tyrrell said, "like increasing sustainability. You can't do that in just one year." A few of the goals that Tyrrell and Nick Vlies, vice president, identified last spring were increasing environmental sustainability, representing student interests on the state level, connecting with all organizations, communicating campus issues to students and expanding the Student Saver program to more businesses. One project currently underway regarding sustainability involves A'viands, the university dining services. According to Tyrrell, the SGA Union and Dining Chair is working with A'viands to have it purchase locally grown food. "It's definitely something that is realistic to think it would be a full-scale operation sometime in the near future," he said. While success has been evident in the areas of sustainability, some students aren't as pleased with the progress in other areas. Kervin Blanke, senior political science major, was surprised with the loss of the Student Saver program. "It was a program that I worked on, so it was disappointing," he said. The Student Saver program allowed students to receive discounts from local businesses. "You used to have to pay for it, but last year we got it so you just had to show your ID," Blanke said. Tyrrell had hoped to establish better communication between SGA and the students. However, it has been a greater challenge than expected. "It's hard reaching the students no matter who you are," he said. "Whether you're Good Times Programming or student government, it's very hard to communicate with students in general." He is hoping that by having better relationships with other organizations, has helped improve some avenues of communication. Erika Bradley, a senior campus environment director, feels SGA officers are more approachable than past years. "They're helping to plan Dude, Your Eggo is Preggo which is an awareness program that RHAA has put on," she said. According to Bradley, Tyrrell is often available in his office allowing students to come in and speak with him. "He's made it an open office, and whenever he's in the office, the door is always wide open," she said. Despite the desire to create a more informed student body, the SGA Web site still lacks up-to-date information. Currently students can review Senate minutes from April 13, 2009. They can also review Executive Branch minutes from Nov. 12, 2007. According to Tyrrell, the UWGB SGA is the largest in the UW System with numbers exceeding UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. "It's very hard for Nick and myself to manage 12 chairs," he said. "It's a very top-heavy system where it's hard to get involvement because there are so many of us and the exec members, that it drowns out the senators." He hopes to reduce the size of SGA allowing the senators to have more responsibility as well as getting more people involved. Not every student agrees with the idea of downsizing the number. "It's been working out fine the past few years so I don't know why it would change this year," Blanke said. While other UW schools have general chair members UWGB has positions that are titled specifically, Tyrrell said. He believes the growth of positions came from a few years ago when a need would arise, and as a result positions would be created to fit that need. "Two years ago they created equality and diversity," Tyrrell said. "That chair just dealt with minorities and disabled people. All of a sudden that was our ninth chair." Prior to holding office as president, Tyrrell had two years of experience with SGA. Despite his efforts as president, some believe he isn't using the experience he has gained. According to Tyrrell, one of the hardest parts is defining what people call making a difference. He believes there are many things people don't realize are an issue that needs to be corrected by SGA. "Nick and I have really been treating this as a re-building year as trying to really set the stage for us to start doing things and for future years to start picking up on it," he said. "If people would look at the picture of the last four years they would see a big difference."