Juana Garcia/The Cougar
The student body rejected the Student Governments Association’s new constitution not just once, but twice. Many students disagreed with not only the draft itself, but the administration and SGA leaders behind it.
Communication, transparency
The constitution largely overstepped its bounds and had a lack of transparency, said English sophomore Christopher Hooper.
“To keep students out of the loop was a big slap in the face to me,” Hooper said. “These are important issues and if students don’t know about them, then we don’t get the opportunity to change what we want.”
Administration, SGA leadership
Former senator Jesus Nieto blames administration for the downfall of SGA because he claims their main goal was to take over and do whatever they needed to get what they wanted.
According to Nieto, SGA was being pushed around in secret meetings, thrown into rooms and borderline threatened. The administration has destroyed the organization and ignored what students want.
“We have all had enough of the UH administration pushing students around,” Nieto said. “We are paying members of this institution. We do have the right to push back and say ‘hey, what’s happening is not right.’”
For Nieto, The results of the election showed that the student body stood up for themselves and told SGA leadership and administration not to mess with student representation.
“I know this organization can do good things,” Nieto said. “However, it’s the people that are in the position of power that determine why either the organization is successful or not. This year, the people in power were cowards and they were probably scared.”
Student impacts
Deeds Not Words, a UH student organization that aims for various social justice issues, became a main advocate in rejecting the document.
They claimed the new constitution this would destroy checks and balances, remove Senate authority to draft bills for student funding, create more bureaucracy and strip senators of their right to draft and modify the SGA budget.
“This constitution is a gross overstepping of UH administrations and SGA executive branch members to undermine fair representation for the student body,” DNW said in an Instagram post.
Nieto, who worked alongside DNW during the campaign, urges students to become more engaged in light of nationwide school funding cuts.
Since this would affect jobs and various opportunities, SGA acts as a vehicle to prevent, or at least mitigate, widespread cuts.
“This is one incident where we really need the student body to not allow administrators to come in and take over,” Nieto said. “That’s exactly what they’re going to do with every situation coming forward.”
