SGA presidents reflect on completing initiatives

Starting every February, students campaign to be the next leaders in Student Government Association. With a competition between two parties, candidates run on initiates they believe will receive votes from the student body.

Holton Westbrook, SGA president from 2015-2016, ran under the umbrella of wanting to give back to students. During his term, he successfully completed multiple initiatives his team planned throughout the year.

Tech to Town, a day full of service for Tech students to give back to the Lubbock community, is still hosted every year since then. Raider Cash allows for students to use their Raider Bucks at specific food places off campus, and is still available around Lubbock. SGA provided scholarships to students based on financial need and merit. Up to that point, for the first time in over four years, they were able to put a hold on student tuition fees at Tech.

“I enjoyed what I did, and I think we were able to deliver in some way on every promise we had made during our campaign,” Westbrook said. “Whenever you make that promise and understand all the moving parts it takes to get those initiatives into action, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of working with administration.”

With SGA working alongside administration, Westbrook said his team had good relations with administration and were able to build upon them to push their initiatives forward.

“Sometimes you’ll have an idea, and it’s under-wrapped and the university has kind of kept it quiet,” Westbrook said. “I think a lot of where the administration’s mind is at, is where you need to go as a student leader sometimes and finding ways to compromise and work on the issues can be difficult.”

Ben Sharp, SGA president from 2016-2017, ran on the initiatives of improving academic advising, increasing campus safety by combating sexual assault, creating a safer alcohol culture and serving alcohol in Jones AT&T Stadium.

For alcohol in the stadium, Sharp said the executives made progress in almost getting the initiative completed, but then Tech played Oklahoma in football, and students chanted profanities toward Baker Mayfield. With it being heard through television, Sharp said SGA, athletics and administration received over 1,000 phone calls of people expressing it was unacceptable behavior. Sharp said administration did not believe adding alcohol to the student’s behavior would be a good move after that.

Since graduating Tech, Sharp said he has thought a lot about the difficulty of completing initiatives. He said the biggest thing is that people promise big projects, and just like any big organization, it could take more than a year to complete.

“Whenever you only have one-year terms, administrators know that and if they really don’t want to deal with whatever you’re pushing, they can just kind of push you off,” Sharp said.

It is not that administrators are constantly blocking ideas, Sharp said, but Tech being a bureaucratic system contributes to it. By the time approvals are made, Sharp said SGA presidents could be almost done with their term, and they do not have much remaining time to take the next steps unless the next president wants to take on the same initiative and build upon it.

Robbie Meyer, SGA president from 2017-2018, ran on the initiatives of a dog park on campus, WiFi in the Jones, a mobile student ID, and more food chains in the Student Union Building, specifically referring to Whataburger and Chipotle.

“There’s a lot of initiatives that we’ve had that people thought weren’t feasible or weren’t going to happen, so I’m here to prove them wrong,” Meyer said once he was announced as president in 2017.

When contacted, Meyer did not want to comment on his time in office.

Colin McLaren was part of the intern program for SGA during Meyer’s term and now serves as a SGA senator for the College of Arts & Sciences. McLaren said Meyer started Pet Awareness Week and slightly worked on a roommate survey.

Although Meyer did not complete his main initiatives, McLaren said it is because they involve big infrastructure changes.

“I think Robbie, like any politician that holds a role in public office, makes these promises and tries to get them done, and some of them happen and some of them don’t,” McLaren said. “He definitely made efforts on those, and he worked them to a certain extent.”

He said students should keep in mind that SGA presidents only have one year in office, and that may be hard to make big change in a bureaucratic system.

“I’m not discounting the fact that one year is plenty of time to get things done,” McLaren said, “but I’m also saying that in one year there are certain things that you set to accomplish that you don’t get done.”

McLaren said like other SGA presidents, Meyer set the groundwork for the next president. However, Sean Lewis, SGA president from 2018-2019, said that Meyer did not have any initiatives from his term roll over to Lewis.

Lewis ran on the main initiative of food trucks on campus, improving late night transportation for students, a personal wellness app, removing off campus housing restrictions and basketball tailgates.

“We were seeking these positions to do the work of the students, so that has been our first priority and our main priority,” Lewis said. “I credit that to the team we have. We have over two decades of combined experience in student government together. We’re putting all of our past experiences together and just hitting the ground running.”

The late night transportation has been an initiative already completed with the new RaiderRide service, which offers students transportation every night. From this point, Lewis said they are extremely focused on the wellness app, but it will specifically relate to assistance with mental health and why it is an issue at Tech.

Continuing, he said there will be an event this semester of food trucks on campus to see how students respond to them. For the brothel law, Lewis said the external vice-president Jude Al-hmoud is working with city council to revise the law.

“We’re rocking and rolling on all our initiatives,” Lewis said, “and we’re excited about the work that we’re gonna be able to get accomplished and get done.”

Lewis has been a member of SGA since his freshman year and worked under Westbrook, Sharp and Meyer. Compared to past leaders, Lewis said he wants to improve upon doing their best to speak with the student body.

“I’ll be optimistic to say I think we can make significant headway in all of the core initiatives we ran on, and if we can’t, we’ll be sure to let the student body know that we couldn’t and this is why and to see if they have any recommendations on what we can do better in the future,” Lewis said.

Overall, each leader said that the presidents are college students that are trying to juggle SGA responsibilities with class, graduate school applications or job interviews, with a social life.

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