Last Friday, the Student Government Association conducted its first meeting of the semester, where it discussed its upcoming events, updates to the Student Travel Fund Guidelines and introduced the Ace the Test bill.
The SGA will host the State of the Student Body Address at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday in PlainsCapital Bank El Comedor on the Brownsville campus and at the same time Thursday in the University Ballroom on the Edinburg campus.
The event will give students the opportunity to meet members of and learn about the SGA.
In last Friday’s meeting, SGA President Alondra Galvan presented the proposed 2017-2018 Student Travel Fund Guidelines.
Galvan said the guidelines will introduce new regulations that will provide a more organized funding process.
The Student Travel Fund allows the SGA to provide funding for students who will travel to conferences and competitions.
“[SGA does] get a budget [from] the university that helps us provide these funds to the students,” she said.
As previously reported by The Rider, the 2016-2017 Student Travel Fund Guidelines were described by Student Involvement administrative assistants as “lengthy” and “tedious.”
Galvan said the SGA faced several issues with last year’s guidelines.
“One of the issues that we did see done last year was that a lot of students did not get funded on time or were not able to get funded because they failed in presenting receipts, they failed in presenting all proper documentation” she said. “It was really hard for administrative assistants to gather up all the documents because on the guidelines from last year, it clearly stated that after travel, applicants had five days after returning to be able to present all documentation.”
Last year’s travel guidelines divided application deadlines into four quarters. The 2017-2018 guidelines will be divided into three semesters in order to organize applications, the SGA president said.
The guidelines are scheduled to be voted on in Friday’s meeting.
In other SGA news, Ernesto Farias, senator at large for the Brownville campus, said he wants to change how students can take the “Ace the Test” survey.
Students who take the survey can receive either four Scantrons, four blue books or a combination of both.
“The V-Link has been crashing in the [last] few years,” Farias said. “Sometimes, the system doesn’t work, sometimes it does. We got a new V-Link format, but it hasn’t worked for some organizations on campus. I know the Student Involvement office has been working on it, but just for [the SGA’s] benefit and to get more student concerns or responses, we’d prefer to use the Qualtrics [Survey] system. I know it’s an on-and-off problem with the system itself.”
Similar to the travel fund guidelines, the “Ace the Test” bill will be voted on during Friday’s meeting.
The next SGA meeting will take place at 2 p.m. Friday in Biomedical Research and Health Building 1.222 on the Brownsville campus and in Academic Services Building 1.106 in Edinburg.
