Georgia State Student Government Association’s (SGA) Team IMPACT is going to need to change a letter in its acronym. The “A” in IMPACT — which last election season meant “Advocating for a 24-hour study space” — will need a new cause to advocate for.
At a Nov. 19 Senate meeting, SGA President Sebastian Parra, who ran for the seat on Team IMPACT’s ticket, announced he had come to an agreement with our university overlord, President Mark Becker, to finally effect a 24-hour study space for the Panther family.
But this initiative, one long striven for by those campaigning under the Team IMPACT moniker, is merely in its infancy. Becker told Parra the administration still needs to sort out the bureaucratic fixings.
“The money is there,” Parra said. “Now we just gotta implement it. [We need to] talk to Dr. Covey about how we can get this rolling.”
The Senate also amended Thursday’s agenda to allocate a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to skim over any documents to be addressed thereafter.
“I will not be going over line-by-line the constitution and bylaws, so please take this time to read over them,” Parra said of the files being amended for the GSU-GPC consolidation.
And although the Senate came better prepared to discuss the docs this week, Parra said they still need to chew through the finishing touches of their bulky bylaws before they wrap it all by Dec. 4.
“Most of them sent me emails saying, ‘It’s good,’” he said of the email suggestions mandated by SGA’s VP of Academic Affairs David Jackson last week. “[But] we have ‘til the end of the year to [consolidate the docs].”
The Senate also approved a resolution to vet prospective graduation ceremony commencement speech makers. The speaker, come walking time, will need to have decent grades, a few community service hours and some empirical proof of school spirit. Other legislation approved will add to the roles SGA’s liaison officers.
SGA also elected to appoint Jacob Hill, a Georgia State freshman, to Head Senator of the College of Education.
“SGA has always been an interest for me,” Hill said. “I just went ahead and went for it…I feel like I bring something different to the table being a freshman.”
SGA Sen. Daniel Duhart of the College of Business nominated his colleague, Sen. Gelila Kebede, as their school’s Head Senator. SGA still needs to fill the vacancy of head senator for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Organizers from the Malcolm X Grassroots movement also made a brief appearance at Thursday’s meeting when they preached speculation of the “White Lives Matter” stickers that have popped up around campus.
The two members asked SGA if it would get on board with their efforts to hold ‘The Man’ accountable for practices of discrimination and racial supremacy. SGA took a rain check until the group made more information available.
And SGA’s Executive Vice President Teara Mayfield said the Senate wasn’t so distracted by their Tweets and ‘Grams Thursday as they were at the last meeting.
“You’ve done a great job,” she said. “I haven’t seen many people on their phones tonight.”
Parra also teased of some progress made with Becker regarding the fight to allow undocumented students (mostly Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals) enrollment privileges at the soon-to-be consolidated Georgia State. The Signal will have more on that soon.
