SG forms advisory boards to help address campus issues

Students will have a new outlet to voice concerns on campus concerns this year through the new Student Government advisory boards created over the summer.

The boards will allow students to voice opinions on topics like student health, green issues, dining, and housing on and off campus, said SG Chief of Staff Tyler Fleck.

By keeping the advisory boards specific to each topic, students are likely to see more progress, said SG President Tyler Montell.

“The advisory boards will concentrate all the time on one issue,” Montell said.

Getting student concerns to the administration is a major function of the boards, and Senate President Jackie Colgate said she hopes administration takes those concerns as seriously as SG does.

“I think because (the boards) are getting fact and figures right from the people who know the issues the best, hopefully it will help them make a difference,” she said.

The advisory boards will be responsible for developing goals as a part of Montell and SG Vice President Grant Mill’s “Campus 365” plan, the comprehensive plan that SG will be following this year under Montell’s administration.

“This is priority number one, to be able to accommodate that plan,” Montell said. “What we’ve seen is that we could have gotten this done by August, but the thing is that most of our advisory board chairmen weren’t in town over the summer. Now we are setting plans in motion.”

Applications for the advisory boards are available on the SG Web site, (www.uksga.org) and are due in October.

Over the summer, Montell and Mills also prepared their proposed budget for the upcoming year to present to the Senate at the first meeting on Sept 10. Montell said the proposed budget includes $100,000 to be allocated to student organizations. That would be an increase from last year’s allocation of $70,000, even though university budget cuts have tightened SG’s overall budget.

“The budget cuts on the local level have really affected us in a negative way, and we didn’t start off in the black,” Montell said. “We were a couple thousand dollars in the hole, and we have been working out of that.”

The debt was a result of favorable accounting figures that did not turn out as predicted. The SG Appropriations and Revenue Committee allocated money to student organizations assuming they would get some of the money back.

“Student (organizations) typically spend 80 percent of what they ask for, so they give back 20 percent,” Montell said. “Accounting looked at it that way, but it didn’t turn out like that.”