SGA Petition Platform Draws Attention

 

In mid-March, the Student Government Association (SGA) launched We the Middkids, an online petition site designed to breakdown the barriers between students and their elected leaders. After a month, the program received mixed reviews.

“One of our goals for this semester is to really increase the transparency of the SGA to student concerns and needs,” said SGA President Charlie Arnowitz ’13 in a video posted on YouTube and attached to an all-campus email on March 18.

According to Arnowitz’s Chief of Staff Anna Esten ’13, the site received “over 2,400” visits in its first month.

“Its use at this point is not as widespread as we would hope,” she wrote in an email. But Esten and First-Year Atwater Senator Hasher Nisar ’16, both champions of the program, were hopeful that site visits would increase.

The program allows students to create petitions after establishing an account with their college email. Every student has 10 votes which can be distributed between petitions. After voting closes, students get their votes returned to them.

In the all-student email announcing the platform, Arnowitz pledged that if a petition received 50 votes, it would automatically be brought before the SGA. If it got 100 votes, Arnowitz said he would personally record a video response to the petition.

Matt Jerrehian ’15 started a petition on the site to open the windows in Proctor to help cool the dining hall.

“Unlocking more windows in Proctor would be so easy and so harmless,” he wrote in an email. “I think that this petition is a good test of the efficacy of the new system.”

But Jerrehian cautioned that every petition shouldn’t be implemented just because it gets a lot of votes.

“For communication with our representatives to be effective, not every popular petition has to be implemented,” he wrote.

Other petitions on the site have ranged from Tupperware use in the dining halls, to creating an outdoor graffiti location and adding a printing station in Hillcrest and Proctor.

At the time of publication, the petition “Get a printing station in Hillcrest or Proctor” had received 117 votes and was labeled “under review” on the site.

The SGA will continue to monitor and respond to petitions on the site througout the spring.