In the wake of the Student Government Association (SGA) election, junior Brendan Walker has resigned as senator due to “social circumstances” in the group.
In an email, Walker said that he didn’t believe the environment of SGA “will be a friendly one for me due to the emails/texts I received from the current executive board.” In addition to Walker’s resignation, senior Ravi Patel was forced to leave over not wearing an SGA polo shirt during week four.
Seniors President Allan Daly and Vice President Courtney Kampert gave more clarity to the Patel situation.
“Constitutionally, Senator Patel failed to complete senator service requirements. That includes going to different events. One of the requirements for that is wear SGA apparel when necessary,” Daly said.
Patel is fighting to get his spot back in the last few weeks of school because, “this is the first year they have introduced this policy, and to no surprise, over 80 percent of senate had not completed their mandatory hours, however, only a select few were kicked off.”
According to Daly and Kampert, in the past SGA executive board has not strongly enforced completing service hours, but with their administration they did. Kampert said, “when Allan and I ran we ran on the fact of holding SGA accountable, and holding the Senate accountable.”
Daly added to the idea of having to wear the SGA polo and said, “It’s important for senators to wear SGA apparel is so other students can recognize they’re a part of SGA.”
In Walker’s email, he talked about how he believes that SGA has been handling itself unprofessionally. Walker said, “there have been numerous instances throughout this term that the executive board has belittled or demeaned someone in the senate, then apologized afterwards, but it should never have been a problem in the first place.”
In response, Daly talked about how taxing this election season was for both tickets, the election committee, and himself.
“After four weeks of the election… being civil on our part, but then always getting pushed back, and having digs taken at us, I guess the day before voting, I guess I had enough and I responded how we were being responded to throughout the election,” Daly said.
Kampert added, “I do believe there were times that we could’ve said things better or we could have reacted better. Those three weeks were very stressful for myself and Allan and the election committee and we were really working non-stop on it.”
President-elect Adam Gronewold and Vice President-elect Belle Hartman would still like to bring to campus some of the ideas that Walker and Ella McCorkle had for their election campaign.
“Senator McCorkle is still on the Senate and if she’s elected next year then we would love to work with her,” Hartman said. “She is a very driven and intelligent senator and we’ve already talked to her about this committee were putting together to reconstruct the by-laws in the Constitution, and she’s expressed interest in that so we plan on working alongside with her to do that.”
Gronewold added, “I’m excited to work with Ella. It’s unfortunate that Brendan’s not involved anymore, but that’s the situation we’re in and we’ll leave it at that.”
Gronewold believes he and his team can handle the difficult issues that have arose this year. He said, “Well the election was pretty rough so pretty sure we’re prepared for that.” The upcoming SGA administration has some positive changes they’re hoping to bring.
Hartman said, “Besides the update videos, being more prominent on social media, just being more prominent within the student body, having meetings that are localized like in the Gavle rooms. Just to get the word out about SGA.”
Daly and Kampert are confident in Gronewold and Hartman. Kampert said, “They both reflect a lot of experience. They have a lot of passion, a lot of care for this school, and they will do their best and I think that’s all you could ask of someone, is that they do their best and that they care and I really do believe that both Adam and Belle really care about this school and this organization and I think that they’ll do their best.”
Daly added, “Both Adam and Belle did an exceptional job handling the extra responsibilities that we pushed on them and I think that really shaped their mindset in not running away from hard topics on campus. I think that’s important cause I do think they are passionate about making changes.”
