At this semester’s inaugural town hall meeting of the Student Government Association (SGA), Vice President of Student Life Jovan Paige revealed more details regarding its proposed legislation to allow student organizations to promote themselves at home basketball games.
The legislation was approved by SGA during a Sept. 18 meeting and was sent to the Georgia State athletics department.
According to Paige, SGA has been in conversations with Georgia State athletics, and that the athletics department proposed an idea for organizations to promote themselves on the video board at the Sports Arena.
“Lanier [Henson] has been in talks with them, and that’s when they proposed the idea of a video montage. We have been looking at logistics and they have been looking at logistics, but we are in talks with them,” Paige said.
He mentioned that the idea proposed would be for the athletics department to shoot a video with the president of the organization and have it displayed on the Sports Arena’s video board.
According to Paige, it will come at no cost to the student organizations that wish to promote themselves. He also said that the original plan, proposed by Vice President of Academic Affairs Sebastian Parra, included only for the promotions to occur during ten men’s basketball games.
One concern that became a point of conversation was the idea that organizations may have to promote themselves during the winter break, when students typically are not on campus. Paige said this was discussed when the legislation was being crafted.
“Even if it is something that might be in the winter months, or with women’s games which notoriously have a lower attendance than men’s games. They’ll have an equal opportunity,” Paige said.
Matt Newhouse, Georgia State’s assistant director of athletics for marketing, told The Signal last week that attendance was something out of the control of athletics and SGA and mentioned that attendance typically drops all over the country during the holiday season.
A provision also mandates that organizations have to promote themselves for at least a week before the game.
“Because we are mandating that they promote themselves at least one week prior to the game, it will get more of those people out to come to those games that don’t normally get as much attendance, like the women’s games,” Paige said.
Senator Justin Brightharp from the College of Arts and Sciences abstained from voting on the resolution at the Sept. 18 meeting on the grounds that organizations must fulfill at least a 2.7 GPA among the members that will attend.
Paige contends that it was placed in the legislation to make it easier for a selection committee to choose the organizations. The committee will be comprised of senators, executive board members and athletics representatives.
“I can understand making it easier to pick, but if that’s the case, you can do community service, then a random draw. Because even then, you could somewhat make it hard to decide between organizations,” Brightharp said. “And if an organization were featured before, then just put them to the side and redraw a new one. Just because it feels like you could single someone out for having a bad year.”
Read more about SGA’s proposed legislation here.
