SGA goal-influence
Student leaders want bigger role in
 metroâs administrative decisions

By Perry Swanson
The Metropolitan

A handmade poster on the wall of Metroâs Student Government Assembly office illustrates an action plan for the group of 12 student representatives.

The posterâs bright colors help outline a list of 23 goals that the student government has ÷ and hasnât ÷ accomplished since the members were elected in April.

Well-defined goals are especially important since the group is becoming increasingly insistent on its ãrightä to influence college policy, SGA members said. The members believe they should have as much influence at Metro as administrators do and cite their status as the collegeâs ãcustomersä to back up the demand.

Much of the student governmentâs agenda was set at a retreat with Metro administrators in May. Five months later, the SGA has accomplished goals on and off its list. The members attribute some of their success to working longer hours.

The representatives voted in August to triple their work schedules to 15 hours per week and increase their monthly stipend from $200 to $500. Almost 80 percent of the annual budget ($90,385) is earmarked for the membersâ monthly stipends.

 The first goal on the list is to ãreachä students who attend classes in the evenings or on weekends. Student government President Karmin Trujillo said this goal was accomplished by extending SGA office hours to evenings and weekends, but the work isnât done yet.

ãWe need to do a little bit more outreach on meeting the needs of our extended campuses,ä she said, adding that the SGA has accomplished plenty on campus.

 The SGA has transformed its role from an extra-curricular activity to a part-time job, Trujillo said. This meant reworking the payment scheme. Members insist it is a ãpay adjustment with an increase in hours,ä not strictly a pay raise.

 The student government helped address accessibility issues for students with disabilities at Auraria. Trujillo said this was accomplished last month when a student club outlined six requests for services for students with disabilities.

Metro President Sheila Kaplan promptly promised to grant the requests, which included revising Metroâs disability handbook and appointing a committee to assess the needs of students with disabilities.

Teresa Harper, vice president of Diversity, played a major role in the push to get the administration to answer the clubâs concerns, Trujillo said.

 Student government members attend Faculty Senate meetings. The student government recently threw its support behind the Faculty Senateâs position on post-tenure review for professors.

Members support evaluating professors after they have been granted tenure, but they fear post-tenure review could be used as a weapon in personal disputes between supervisors and faculty members.
ãWe have tried our hardest to make sure that at least one student government member is at every major meeting,ä Trujillo said.

 The student government hired a full-time administrative assistant to take care of office tasks. Trujillo said the assistant, whose salary comes from a budget in Student Activities, not the student government, will be in the office by Oct. 20.

The student government has also accomplished things that arenât on the list, including a house-cleaning of its Judicial Board. They appointed Krystel Bigley as new chief justice of the board Sept. 22 to replace Mark Zanghetti.

Zanghetti was AWOL for two months before he turned in his resignation. The student government then had to wait for a phone call from Zanghetti to find out who else was on the committee. The SGA couldnât find the minutes of the meeting when the judicial board members were named.

When the group appointed Bigley, it decided that the positions would be considered vacant unless the missing members showed up at the next student government meeting.

Dawn York and Rose Maes have now been accounted for, and Bigley has since distributed copies of the boardâs bylaws and started holding regular meetings. The board rules over grievances between students and student organizations.

And the SGAâs inbox is not empty.

The group is pushing for a week-long break during the fall semester. Trujillo also said that the student government constitution is vague, self-contradictory and outdated, and the group is working on a new version.

The changes will be submitted to students for a vote later this semester. The group is also working on a pamphlet to give students more information about the SGA.

But the student governmentâs public presence over the last two months has largely been dominated by its campaign to end use of Metroâs nickname, ãThe Met.ä

But even as the members wear buttons, distribute fliers, gather signatures for petitions, unanimously pass resolutions and convince Metro programs to stop using ãThe Met,ä Metro administrators have not wavered in their commitment to using the nickname.


This is the first of a three-part series  about the Student Government Assembly.