In order to encourage students to join on the conversation on how to improve UH, the Student Government Association is offering students a chance to voice their concerns with a new suggestion box that will be placed in the Student Center South by the beginning of spring semester.
Because of the low use of the online forum mySidewalk, SGA is moving toward making the online forum more of a public forum for convenience.
In the last six months, mySidewalk has had 2,200 views and 40 responses, SGA President Shaun Theriot-Smith said. With the suggestion box, their able to get more hands on with students.
“We’re able to get good feedback from students and get good ideas from students,” Speaker of the Senate John Fields said. “We can make some of these really cool ideas that people have realities and make UH a better place.”
Originally the idea came from the Student Life Committee and some have credited Chair of Student Life Hugo Salinas and College of Education Senator Meghan Galvan for coming up with the idea.
The committee approached SGA with the idea to get students more involved.
“There’s a lot of students who have really great ideas and really great suggestions about how to make the University better,” Fields said. “They just don’t exactly know how to make that idea (a) reality.”
As for now, the graphic for the box is being finalized and SGA is brainstorming on how to secure the box in the Student Center South to avoid theft. Salinas would like to put the box out as soon as possible but it will not be available until the beginning of spring semester.
Once the suggestion box is made public it will enter a “trial period,” and students will be able to fill out a form with their contact information and and slip their idea to SGA.
Depending on the amount of suggestions, the box will be checked every one to two weeks. Any suggestions pulled out will get a response to let the student know they have been heard and what the steps being taken to address the issue are.
In order to entice students to submit their suggestions, there will be random T-shirt and promo item giveaways.
Depending on the success of the first suggestion box, a second one will be placed at another location.
SGA will also consider placing an online version directly linked to its website.
“It’s your university, it’s your campus. We’re just trying to make it better, and we need as many suggestions and as many opinions to do so,” Salinas said. “The student life committee consists of seven to ten people, and that’s nowhere near as good as having 40,000 students providing input, so every suggestion counts.”
