SGA launches "Transparency Project"

The Student Government Association (SGA) inaugurated its promised “Transparency Project” on Monday with a minute-long Internet video detailing what each executive officer has been working on over the past few weeks.

Executive Secretary of SGA Paige Doyle, who along with the rest of the executive team ran on a platform of openness, accountability and transparency, said that the plan is to produce and distribute via email a video every two weeks this year updating the student body on SGA’s latest efforts. The minute- long videos will also be available on YouTube and may play enhanced with subtitles on flatscreen advertisement TV’s across campus.

“We want people to first of all know our faces, and know who we are, and be able to, if they see us walking to class, and have a question, know who we are enough go up to us and ask,” Doyle said. “But second, definitely to know what we’re doing. People listen to videos a lot more than they do emails.”

SGA will work with sophomore Maxwell Dickey, founder and president of the Filmmaking Club, and other members of the club to produce the videos.

“I’ve been on SGA for four years now and I’ve had complaints, people asking me what does SGA do? What do you guys do? It got to the point where I was really frustrated because even the SGA emails that we send out with updates people didn’t get to read them,” senior Moses Song, Executive President of SGA, said. “During our campaign we made videos and they went viral. In that sense we were contemplating making more videos, so [the videos are] short, something people are attracted to, and hopefully we can make it more attractive as we go along this year and people will be more willing to watch it rather than reading a

whole email about, you know, this is what we’re doing.”

“I hadn’t been on SGA before and I didn’t know what they did. People should know even without having to go to the SGA website and looks things up,” Doyle said.

Sophomore Aryel Abramovitz said that he was very interested to watch the informational videos every two weeks.

“I would definitely like to be informed of what they are doing,” Abramovitz said. “I think a transparency project would be very effective because it would allow students to know what [SGA is] doing currently, what they are planning to do and it will integrate students into the student government, which is extremely important.”

“I know that they have a Facebook page where if somebody has a concern they can write on the wall and an SGA member almost always answers it for them or says they will bring it up at the next meeting,” Abramovitz added. “However, sometimes I don’t know what they are doing unless I personally ask an SGA member, which I know is hard because not everyone knows an SGA member.”

“I definitely think the Facebook medium to give ideas could potentially be very effective but, however, I don’t think there’s very much follow up. They could say: here’s what we talked about, here’s what we plan on doing,” Abramovitz said.

Doyle said the biweekly videos were preliminary steps in a larger effort to make the SGA more transparent. “More projects are in the works,” Doyle said.

“It’s a good time to have face time online,” Song said. “We are not complete brains all in SGA, we need more people with more ideas, more creativity, than what we have, so we’re always open to ideas.”

“During the last three years, the secretary’s job was to send out the minutes, send out different resolutions, [and] send out school wide emails about what SGA is doing. This year I thought this would be a really good project for Paige to do, to give her something to work with all year along,” Song said. “It is one of the more important jobs because it sums up what we all do, so it is an integral part of letting all the students know.”

“People don’t know that SGA does anything. They love the fun events that we have on campus, but besides that, they don’t really see what goes on,” Doyle said.

Doyle said the goal of the project was for the student body to have a better idea of the SGA initiatives on campus. Furthermore, she hopes that students will present the SGA with questions, comments and concerns.

Song is also coordinating with the Dean of Student Life to set up a “fireside chat or tea time” type event at Nolan’s on 33rd where students could go to have a conversation with the executive president of SGA.

Song also emphasized that SGA meetings are open to the entire student body.