Three months into the academic year, Student Association has yet to overcome one of its biggest obstacles: finding enough representatives to fill its Assembly. 

President Mackenzie Mertikas and Vice President Sameeha Saied opened member applications for the second time in the fall semester at last Monday’s meeting. SA typically accepts applications for new representatives at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. The Assembly votes to confirm or deny the applicants. 

Mertikas cited a lack of membership in the Assembly as the reason for extending the applications. The number of SA representatives this semester is low compared to the same time last year, she said.

“It was really hard for us to start this year with such a low number of people,” Mertikas said.  “We’ve really still been in the recovery stage of a lot of things that happened last year, trying to rebuild the organization from the ground up.” 

SA’s current struggles comes after a substantial drop in membership during the spring 2019 semester. Internal tensions within SA last year contributed to the loss in membership, Mertikas said. She was chief of staff at the time. 

The organization’s April election ended with some students accusing SA of election rigging and bias. About 20 minutes before SA election polling closed last semester, comptroller candidate SA’s election board Eduardo Gomez’s campaign was suspended in what SA’s Board of Elections Committee said was a “serious infraction of SA bylaws.”

Torre Payton-Jackson, SA’s Public Relations Chair at the time, posted a video to her personal Instagram story where she cursed out people who accused SA of election rigging. 

Multiple campaigns remained under investigation more than one week after polling closed.

“There was a lot of stuff with the election second semester of last year that didn’t help the internal environment of SA,” Mertikas said. “Walking into that room in the second semester just was not healthy. So it makes sense that students wouldn’t want to be in that environment.”

The SA website currently lists 22 assembly members and 15 cabinet members. Public Relations Chair John Fisher said the organization is still figuring out the exact numbers due to absences and students studying abroad. 

Kyle Rosenblum, SA vice president during 2018-19 academic year, said internal tensions could be one of the factors behind the drop in membership. Conflict is natural in any student organization, but he said the tensions were “probably a source for some people wanting to take a step back.”

“Retention has historically been a problem for the Student Association,” Rosenblum said. “It’s such a huge organization with so many responsibilities.”  

Lack of communication between cabinet members and representatives was also a key cause of the decrease, Mertikas said. Many representatives joined the organization last year without being properly informed of their responsibilities. Some members missed meetings, took extended leaves of absence or resigned from SA, as they were unprepared for the workload of the organization, she said. 

“They weren’t really briefed on what the expectations are, everything that goes into being a part of this organization,” Mertikas said. “That was the biggest problem.”

Mertikas also noted the number of applicants who joined SA during this year’s September elections “was definitely below” the usual amount. The Assembly approved eight new members during the elections. 

Beyond the number of Assembly members, Mertikas stressed the importance of recruiting representatives from different schools and colleges within SU. 

A majority of SA seats are currently filled by students from the College of Arts of Sciences, according to the SA website. The School of Architecture, David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics and University College hold no seats. The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, College of Visual and Performing Arts, School of Education and School of Information Studies each has one.

“We should really focus on (recruiting) all of the other schools because they have so many things that they can bring to the table,” Mertikas said.  

During last Monday’s meeting, Mertikas and Saied outlined several strategies for recruiting members. These include seeking nominations from other student organizations, increasing SA’s visibility on campus and approaching students individually who they believe would make a good fit for SA.

“And then to work on, once we get people here, how we keep them here,” Mertikas said, “because that’s one of the biggest problems SA faces.”

Published on October 27, 2019 at 10:03 pm

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu