Student body elects the 2018-2019 SGA Executive Council members

On March 27, the UHCL Student Government Association (SGA) announced their new Executive Council for the 2018-2019 school year.

SGA is a student organization that serves as the voice of the student body, elects students to committees, provides input to the administration and allocates resources to the other student organizations. Members are representatives from on-campus student organizations.

As of 2017, all students are eligible to vote for the SGA officers. The votes were cast through email.

The new SGA Executive Council consists of President Izuh Ikpeama, biology major; VP – Committee Coordinator Mohamed AbdelGilil, biology major. Jessica Kunzat, math major, the VP – Outreach & Communication, and the VP – Administration Tyler Baggerley, biomedical sciences major. The four students campaigned together, a first for the university.

Ikpeama currently serves as VP – Administration and AbdelGilil is the current VP – Outreach & Communication. The officers take their new positions in the fall semester.

“When I decided to run for president, I knew that Jessica, Mohamed and Tyler were all interested in potentially running for an Executive Council position in SGA, so we all collectively decided to run for a different position,” Ikpeama said. “These are people that I’ve basically known my whole time at UHCL, and we’ve been involved in other organizations together so we each knew that we would work great as a team.”

Kunzat said the group could better their performance as the students’ voice by creating a united front in the campaign process.

“We not only felt like campaigning would be more effective as a group, but we strongly believe in the power of a cohesive work environment,” Kunzat said.

While campaigning as a group is new to UHCL, it has proven effective elsewhere.

“At other universities, students usually run together in cabinets, so we thought it would be a good idea to maximize our campaign efforts and get the most done in our respective positions if we were elected,” Ikpeama said.

This was the first year that three of the four council positions had more than one candidate, so some of the candidates believed that running together helped to ensure the winners would know how to work together cohesively.

“We decided to run together as a cabinet because those are the people that we each wanted to be with as we know how much we can and will get done this upcoming term,” AbdelGilil said.

With competition high this year, the students decided to change their tactics when running. Each candidate could post 35 flyers and there was a designated table where the candidates could campaign to passersby.

“Ultimately, campaigning this year was a totally different experience, and I think it’s a great first step towards getting SGA’s name out there at UHCL and getting students involved in the political process,” Ikpeama said.

Even though the 2017-2018 school year is not over, the SGA Executive Council-elect has started creating ideas and formulating plans for the next year.

“I think that collectively our first goal will be to do some kind of survey so that we can hear from the student body and truly understand what the needs and wants are,” Kunzat said.

Moreover, AbdelGilil said he wants students to join SGA and to make the organization more visible, because they are one of the ways students are represented. AbdelGilil plans on meeting with students to discuss issues that students have to face.

Ikpeama plans on getting the SGA Senate moving forward and changing the relationship between students and SGA

“We want [the students] to know that SGA is here to advocate for them and any problems that they may be experiencing,” Ikpeama said. “In the past, SGA has been more student-organization based, but we hope to change that and reach out to the all students so that they know they have a voice and can enact change on campus if they really work towards it.”

The current SGA president, Justin Murphy, spent a large portion of his term spreading the word about SGA and dealing with the impact Hurricane Harvey left on the school.

“As president, we were able to bring a lot more awareness to UHCL about SGA and the things we can do,” Murphy said. “We also were able to accomplish a lot in Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and in the food drive.”

Murphy spent the past school year as the face of SGA on campus. As SGA president, he said he helped a lot of students on campus and made sure the student voice was heard by administration, a role he hopes the next Executive Council will continue.

“I hope they continue the trend of being advocates for the students,” Murphy said. “I hope they continue to put the students needs first, which I know they will. I also hope they continue to make SGA more known on campus.”