BRIEF: SGA meeting delayed by president’s dispute with sponsor

The Tuesday, Feb. 8 Student Government Association (SGA) general assembly meeting began 20 minutes late because of a dispute between SGA President J Scates and the meeting’s sponsor, Loretta Williams Gurnell, founder of the SUPERGirls SHINE Foundation (SGSF).

Just before the meeting was supposed to begin, Scates objected to the inclusion of the Chick-fil-A logo in Gurnell’s presentation and left the meeting. Gurnell and the rest of the SGA stayed and began the meeting. During the presentation, Gurnell spoke about internship opportunities available to students through her organization and offered advice about networking, self-promotion and finding a career. She also shared an anecdote about her son working at Chick-fil-A. On the corresponding slide was an image of her family beside the Chick-fil-A logo. 

SGA leaders initially attributed the late start to technical difficulties. During the open forum portion of the meeting, The Signal’s Managing Editor of Content and Operations Troylon Griffin II asked why Scates had left the meeting before it began. Brandon Woodcock, vice president of administration, provided an explanation.

“I would say that J left the meeting because he didn’t agree with the presentation we were going to put forward, specifically the Chick-fil-A logo and emblem,” Woodcock said. “Because of how that company has represented themselves, and I don’t believe that J feels that that aligns with the values we are trying to coincide with here or project.”

After this statement was made, SGA clarified in the Zoom chat that the disagreement between Scates and Gurnell about the inclusion of the Chick-fil-A logo was what had caused the delay and Scates’ absence. At the SGA general assembly meeting Feb. 15, Scates said that their PTSD was triggered at the Feb. 8 meeting, causing them to leave.

The Signal requested information from Alexis Nwagui, program manager for Strategic Partnerships, about Gurnell’s connection to the university and received a response from Daniel Ramirez, interim Assistant Vice President of Marketing and Communications, indicating that she was a UHCL alumna and had provided internship opportunities to UHCL students and used facilities on campus for meetings.

SGSF stated that Gurnell was not an alumna of UHCL, but of Central State University. She also conducted research at Cornell University, but did not mention any educational ties to UHCL. Feb. 17, Ramirez responded to an inquiry seeking clarification on this inconsistency and corrected himself, attributing the error to a miscommunication. Neither Strategic Partnerships, Marketing and Communications nor SGSF responded to questions about the origins of the relationship between the two organizations.