SGA President, senior Mahder Teferra, and sophomore Senator Cameron Laychak presented their plans to send out a statistical sample survey and a questionnaire this fall at a Feb. 18 SGA meeting.
The questionnaire, which will be sent to all students, will have open-ended questions, Laychak said. The survey aims to fact-find, asking questions such as what students think the most important issue on campus is.
“We can try to really figure out and get issues facing students, and like, why these issues are happening. Who are they happening to?” Laychak said. “We want to recommend projects, policy changes and other suggestions to solve them.”
Laychak said he and Teferra felt that the 2023 plan did not make sufficient use of the data it collected, but the 2025 plan aims to do the opposite.
The new strategic plan will take a more empirical approach, interpreting more quantitative questions into the survey and questionnaire, Laychak said.
The statistical sample survey will be incentivised through gift cards or raffles to encourage student participation, according to Laychak.
At the recent meeting, sophomore Merrick Modun, chair of SGA’s Public Relations Committee, asked Teferra and Laychak about how they plan to ensure the project continues after fall of 2025.
Teferra said these data collection plans are planned for every two years during the fall semester. She plans to meet with her successor after the spring election to discuss the plan for the fall and make it stronger.
The biannual plan is not codified in the SGA constitution, and it would be up to a future president of SGA to bring up the discussion of codifying it if value is found in the plan, Teferra said.
“We want to compile everything,” Laychak said. “So we put all the data, our recommendations and everything else on one document.”
The data interpretation process includes creating focus groups, which would be made up of people from clubs and student groups, Teferra said. The focus groups would take the issues brought up by students in the survey and questionnaire and determine causes and solutions, she said.
Originally, the strategic plan called for the creation of ad hoc committees, temporary groups designated to solving specific problems, Teferra said.
However, the finalized plan does not include provisions for the immediate creation of such committees. That determination will be left up to the next SGA president and senate, Teferra said.
“They were tasked with writing questions and figuring out, you know how to best disperse the survey, what incentives to use, et cetera,” she said.
Earlier in the meeting, a resolution that aims to protect students from presidential executive orders was tabled for a second week in a row.
The measure was delayed for the first time because Teferra was absent from a Feb. 11 meeting. Sophomore SGA Speaker Kennedy Connors said this most recent delay was to give the sponsors of the resolution more time to finalize the proposal’s details.
The resolution is expected to be voted on during the next meeting on Feb. 25, Connors said.
