Last fall, there was a bill introduced to the Alabama State University Student Government Association (SGA) senators to eliminate the SGA presidential candidate and SGA vice presidential candidate from running on the same political ticket for office.
This editorial board was informed that SGA Executive President Dylan Stallworth vetoed the bill and asked the senators to review their decision before presenting the bill again.
This editorial board feels that the senators should understand the history of this action before wiping it out. We believe it would have been in the students’ best interest if the senators had done their homework before making this decision.
In reviewing past newspapers, former students have run for the SGA presidency and the SGA vice presidency separately and there was always conflict once they were elected. Why? Because both individuals ran on different platforms and they both had different agendas. Subsequently, once they were elected their was tension between the two because the president felt like his or her agenda was the most important because of his position, while the SGA vice president felt as if his agenda was just as important because the majority voted for him or her also.
About six or seven years ago, this issue reached a crescendo and the SGA senate did a study and found that most universities required that the presidential candidate and the vice presidential candidate would run on one ticket to reduce the amount of confusion and tension, once they obtained the offices.
For example, the presidential candidate may have run on trying to implement a reduction in the amount students for were paying for meals, while the vice presidential candidate wanted to increase the price of meals so that students could have better options and choices. Neither wanted to bend and the confusion and tension began. Subsequently, students were caught in the middle and nothing was accomplished, because each candidate, once elected had differing views.
Since the SGA Constitution is set up with three branches, very similar to the United States Constitution, you will notice that those founders believed that the president and the vice president should run on the same ticket.
After years of experiencing this turmoil, the students began to see the benefit of the candidates running on the same ticket and enacted a law to ensure that this occurred.
Now some senators could very well argue that our student government is not like other SGAs and this staff would also agree. Unfortunately, unlike other student governments around the country, our candidates do not run their campaigns on issues that affect the student body such as better Wi-Fi, better meals in the cafeteria, better parking, better safety and security, better library hours and the list can go on and on. Instead, their campaigns are run on cute slogans, popularity, who has the best campaign signs or social media, and who sounds the most convincing.
If campaigns were run on real issues, then the SGA presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate would be forced to enter office with the same public agenda and students would look forward to them attacking those issues that were noted during the campaign.
Hopefully, the university will actually see a SGA president and vice president on one ticket running on REAL issues instead of popularity.