Photo Courtesy José Pablo Rojas
Jamejdra Holverstott | THE RIDER
The Student Government Association’s executive-elect officers, President-elect José Pablo Rojas and Vice Presidents-elect Yahia Al-Qudah and Anacette Cantu plan on implementing a two-pronged approach to their agenda, focusing on internal and external affairs.
The external issues include improving student outreach efforts, introducing test preparation classes and making the campuses more friendly toward LGBT students. Some of the internal issues the executive team will focus on include reforming the structure of the SGA, introducing senate internships and filling vacancies.
“So, the first thing that we’re going to do is, obviously, meet with students to construct the entirety of SGA,” Rojas said. “The first order of business that needs to be done in the first senate meeting is getting a chair of the senate. So, once that gets done, that will get the ball rolling. It usually gets done very soon after inauguration.”
The external and internal issues will be divided between the elected officers after inauguration.
“We’re going to use the program that’s being implemented this semester, [the Collegiate Advancement Student Advisory Council program], for those purposes, and one thing that we are going to be doing is reviewing everything that has to be done at SGA, so that we can be able to have a successful year,” Rojas said.
The council program was implemented in response to the many students that are not aware of SGA’s presence or function on campus and its goals to have a more direct pathway of communication.
“So, how it’s going to work is it’s going to be implementing an advisory council per every single college at UTRGV,” Rojas said. “And it’s gonna bring about all the organizations together in the form of electing their own delegates.
“So, let’s say if a certain college has 10 organizations, and every single organization will be electing their own individual delegate and that delegate will be forming the [council] of their college, which will also form the SGA representation of that college, the senator and also the dean of that college or … any representation body from the dean.”
He said the program will bring these organizations together so they can network and hold SGA officials accountable.
The newly elected officers plan to divide tasks by having Brownsville Vice President-elect Al-Qudah concentrate on internal issues and Edinburg Vice President-elect Cantu concentrate on external issues. Both vice presidents will work alongside Rojas to address the affairs.
Photo Courtesy José Pablo Rojas
“What [Rojas and Cantu are] gonna handle are some of the basics of the executive team,” Al-Qudah said.
He said the executive team is going to start by meeting with university administration about opening educational resources.
Al-Qudah will focus on internal affairs in the SGA by reviewing applications and interviewing potential candidates to fill positions within the association.
“Once we have … a base, on my side, it will be the implementation of the [Collegiate Advancement Student Advisory Council] program,” he said. “So, that includes communication with student [organizations] to bring them up to speed about the [program] and communicating with deans so that these advisory councils can officially be complete within the college.”
The newly elected officers hope to strengthen communication between students and administration and hold officials accountable through the Collegiate Advancement Student Advisory Council program.
“Some of the things that we’ve been doing in SGA … to increase our civic engagement at UTRGV … is co-write a resolution,” Al-Qudah said.
The senate passed the resolution and it is being reviewed by an administrative committee on how to implement it.
“So, basically, it’s an election holiday resolution,” he said. “So, on every even-numbered year, where there is an election happening … we are trying to implement a holiday on that specific day.”
Some students have not been able to vote because of class or work, Al-Qudah said.
“At least we can give a holiday to our students and our faculty and staff, so they can go and vote on that specific day,” he said.
On the executive team’s list of external affairs is a plan to implement a task force that oversees issues to advance LGBT acceptance on campuses.
“The task force will be derived from … a sexuality and gender center,” Rojas said. “It’s a diversity and inclusion task force, and it’s going to be directly aimed for LGBTQIA+ people, but we will also want to make it more inclusive in regards to [people of color].”
The president-elect spoke to students before proposing the idea to form the task force.
“We were even in agreement that the way to highlight a group of people, or the way to highlight an issue, is bringing the people that are affected by it the most to the frontline and highlighting them, instead of us just leading it entirely,” Rojas said.
On May 3, Rojas, Al-Qudah and Cantu of Team Vision United will take office as the newly elected executive officers of the Student Government Association.
