During last Friday’s Student Government Association meeting, the senate appointed a committee to write referendum guidelines and approved the Ace the Test Bill.
The senate voted to establish a committee to begin writing the referendum guidelines and appointed College of Liberal Arts Senator Ivan Morado as the chair.
The purpose of the guidelines is to provide a comprehensive policy for conducting student referenda, which is a student vote administered through designated university channels to recommend approval of proposed changes related to official university business.
“Its main purpose is to show the requirements of what is required if [a department] would like to increase a fee or to make a new fee,” SGA President Alondra Galvan said. “Let’s say, for example, that Student Involvement wants to have their own fee. They just can’t have it. What needs to happen is … there has to be a minimum percentage from the student population vote for it and that’s referendum.”
In other business, the senate passed the Ace the Test Bill. It is a program for current UTRGV students to acquire free testing materials through the completion of a survey, which will help the SGA collect data from the student body’s point of view regarding university matters.
The survey will be administered electronically and written professionally by a member of the SGA with no more than five questions that align with the UTRGV Vaquero Code: Honesty, Integrity and Respect. Surveys will be approved by the administrator, Brownsville Senator-at-Large Ernesto Farias.
Farias, who has been working on the bill since the summer, said he is happy about the approval.
“It took [the senate] a while to approve, but I know that it [took] this long because the senate wanted to take care of it and wanted it to be perfect,” he said. “We didn’t want to rush it.”
As previously reported by The Rider, after presenting his concerns to the SGA, kinesiology sophomore Rodrigo Ruiz’s transportation request for students from Rio Grande City to UTRGV has been granted. He came to the meeting to thank the SGA for its assistance.
“I feel very excited and emotional for the Rio Grande City students,” Ruiz said. “Now, they have the ability to go to school and not have to worry about having to waste money for gas. I’m really appreciative of the SGA team for allowing me to be a part of history.”
Engineering technology senior Lazaro Castro was appointed as the Senator for the College of Engineering. Castro said his goal is to address the concerns students may have.
“I would really like to address the concerns, whenever they come up, by the students,” he said. “One of the main concerns that has been brought up is the lack of a [covered] walkway [in Brownsville]. [I’m] looking forward to working with staff and, of course, the senate and student government to get that addressed [and], hopefully, we can come up with a solution for that.”
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals resolution was postponed again and will be placed on the agenda for the next senate meeting. The proposed Special Event Fund Guidelines, which supports students hosting educational and humanitarian events at UTRGV, was sent to an SGA committee for review.
