9 July 1999

Dear Brian,

I read your letter to the Red and Black of 8 July regarding the printer paper cost increase.  I wanted to respond to your question about SGA.

Students are never involved in meaningful decision-making at UGA (and when they are, administrators choose spineless SGA lackeys to make the decisions, as these students will agree with the administration always).  

If you look back on every significant decision made in the last year, they were all done while class was out-of-session.  Such was the case when Student Affairs passed the “Summary Dismissal Policy” (Winter Break), and when UGA chose it’s new Vice-President for Student Affairs (all the candidate visits were scheduled between the spring and summer terms).

To answer the question in your letter to the R&B: SGA had no say, nor was it consulted on the paper issue as far as I’m aware.  But, that’s unremarkable.  SGA wasn’t consulted on the Summary Dismissal Policy and SGA did not get a seat on the search committee for the Vice President of Student Affairs either.  In fact, we had to contact senior administrators and suggest that SGA be involved in the selection of the Vice President for Student Affairs.  Our efforts failed.

If the paper fee irritates you, check out the situation with student activity fees.  I think they’re $38/semester now (52% of which goes to administrative overhead).  Student Affairs encouraged SGA to increase these fees last year, without telling us that there was a $1 million surplus already.  You can view a complete breakdown of the student activity fee allocation at www.uga.edu/sga/eac/.

The administration wants to use the surplus money to illuminate the intramural fields.  Whether or not that’s a good use of the money, it would have been nice if Student Affairs had asked students for their opinion on spending the surplus.  

UGA is in the Stone Age of student rights.  We’re still fighting battles that were won 30 years ago at other campuses.  Students have no meaningful say in college governance at UGA, and most disturbing of all, there’s no beer at the Tate Center.  (Now, that’s an injustice!)

Regards,



Chris Hoofnagle
SGA President Pro-Tempore
choof@arches.uga.edu