ABOUT
ACCOUNTABILITY
Under our leadership, the SGA will have continuous dialogue with students and our focus will shift from event-based programmatic initiatives to initiatives that investigate deep issues and create long-term change.
Why is the mental health on campus so poor? What policies make it hard for people who have experienced sexual assault to get resources? We will look at the questions, answer them, and push administration to address these important issues.
To do this, we will ensure that SGA leaders and members are professionally trained. They will understand how to create year-long budgets and plans before Fall 2016 begins. From then on, we will have a long-term calendar of projected dates of goals available for all students, staff, faculty, and SGA members to work off of.
To ensure proper communication between SGA and students, every month we will hold an open forum where students can voice their concerns. These forums will be supplemented by our redesigned Executive Branch, which shifts from department-focused leadership, to institutional leadership.
By the end of Spring 2017, we will not only have engaged more of UMBC but will have opened an inter-collegiate dialogue so that Baltimore’s collegetown has more opportunities to give back to the community in which we are housed.
SUSTAINABILITY
We believe that all students should feel comfortable and connected to campus culture. Students will be able to advocate for themselves and their interests through SGA, and we will work hard to foster this kind of environment.
Student Government should be a community that supports students in making change, and a space in which to do so. Our vision includes SGA as a place of unity and empowerment for students where they can come together and believe that they have the capability to enact change on our campus and eventually in the world.
This also means that UMBC should act as a space for students from ALL backgrounds to call their home. We will work on adding more gender-neutral bathrooms and fostering student-faculty collaborations that will garner a curricula that is more representative of UMBC’s diverse community.
Our administration will inspire involvement of the UMBC student body in SGA, and give them the resources to be agents of change.
INCLUSIVITY & EMPOWERMENT
Under our leadership, our campus will be more sustainable. UMBC currently is a high energy consumer and change will not happen overnight. However, we will implement small, innovative strategies to make our campus more environmentally friendly in the long-term.
We want to push to include paper towel-free bathrooms and vending misers- devices that limit that amount of energy consumed when vending machines are not in use.
We want to work closely with administration and staff to understand heating and cooling policies and see where reasonable changes can be made. We will also encourage the installation of meters to monitor the energy consumption of each building.
Some of our bigger goals include installing white roofs that reflect sunlight to keep buildings cool, hosting dorm competitions to encourage energy efficiency among students, and an urban apiary (bee house)!
These innovations help us improve our green footprint, but also help us save money to put toward other programs that support students.
WHY SGA MATTERS
Tuition costs increase each year, parking gets more difficult to find, but the worst thing for undergraduates at UMBC will be the loss of a strong student government. Our Student Government Association allocates over $1,000,000 from student activity fees each year and with much money comes much power.
This organization is capable of driving tremendous change across our university from the broad policies level to daily classroom interactions. A strong student government has the funding, bargaining power, and collective student interest to change the experience of being a UMBC student. We're talking about institutional change that will affect how it feels to walk onto academic row as an undergraduate student. Our campaign is not just about projects and events. It’s about changing a campus culture. There are a lot of eyes on UMBC right now, and we have the opportunity and the capability to inspire national change.
Our platform is based on three umbrella topics as well as the establishment of a sexual assault task force. We focus specifically on accountability, inclusivity and empowerment, and sustainability, but we are interested in addressing all of the deep issues that effect current and future students. We want SGA to be visible and responsive to the needs and issues that affect students and our community by supporting an ongoing dialogue and communication.​
