This upcoming week, students have the opportunity to vote for next year’s leaders. 

The Student Government Association will be holding elections to further the legacy of the organization that serves its students and school. 

“We impact the school in a lot of different ways through the students and faculty,” said SGA Vice President Alexis Quackenbush. “We grant departmental grants, so we have many departments on campus getting grants for certain things they need. The English department needs a grant for Common Read, something they hold every year, so we help fund that. The Rec wants a departmental grant to host their crawfish cook-off, so we help with that too. We also help with travel grants so students can travel and represent Southeastern. On top of that, we do different legislative [actions] and try to better Southeastern.”

The election process is held every spring semester. Interested students had to turn in an application at a certain deadline and attend at least one meeting regarding the process of running for SGA. 

After all the applicants are taken into account, there will be a debate held the following week, which will be Tuesday, March 24. Students will be able to vote March 30 through April 1 until 5:30 p.m.

Various positions in SGA are president, vice president, chief justice, justice and senator. 

The president acts as the face of the students of the university, having multiple responsibilities such as fulfilling office hours and leading the SGA. The vice president also helps in managing the SGA, such as creating agendas for meetings and help write legislation. Justices handle parking appeals and interpretation of other legislations. According to Justice Corey Darvill, there will be legislations that will be passed to allow the Chief Justice, who heads the Justices, to appoint Justices, but for now, students will be voting in this upcoming election on Justices. 

Graduate student in applied sociology Tim Reling and Quackenbush will be going head to head for the title of SGA president while Bradley Watson will be running unopposed for Vice President. In addition, current SGA president Stephanie Travis will be pursuing Chief Justice.

Although there will be no opposition regarding the positions for vice president and chief justice, there are various candidates running for senator. Senators are tasked with representing the students belonging to their academic college.

“Each senator represents their college at the university,” said Quackenbush. “They try to represent them well and do as much as they can for the students of Southeastern and the college. Their duties involve meetings every Monday at five and helping volunteer at booths we work.”

The requirements for senator include having a 2.75 GPA, being a member of at least two clubs and being able to attend SGA meetings. The number of senator positions for each college depends on how many students enroll. There is one senator for every 500 students. 

Even though there is competition among those running for senators, justices and president, Quackenbush believes there would be more people running if the student body knew more about SGA. 

“I don’t think a lot of people are informed on SGA,” said Quackenbush. “They don’t really know about SGA and whenever I talk to people, they want more information about it. I don’t think it’s out there [that] the SGA is having elections because whenever we opened it up for appointed senators during the spring, we had a lot of people apply. So I think if more people knew about it, we would have more running.”