It’s time to go party, UMD! After weeks of fervent campaigning, the Go Party has swept the SGA elections, with all winning members of the executive board running on the Go Party ticket.
The Go Party, which had a total of 24 winning members, planned a proactive campaign strategy that sought to involve students and increase awareness of the SGA’s responsibilities and duties.
“Most students did not even know what SGA did,” incoming sophomore SGA member Megan Konigkramer said. “They didn’t realize that we are the ones responsible for money allocated to student organizations.”
Most of their success was found by directly reaching out to students. By talking to students, members of the Go Party were able to gather nearly 2,000 phone numbers and email addresses to use to use to remind students to vote. In addition,, students were asked to sign a pledge to vote in general and were further encouraged to vote for the Go Party. “It was a really successful method,” Konigkramer said.
The Go Party, along with the opposing party, For Party, both had similar plans to reform the financial budget: the biggest concern among students. Often, student organizations will inflate their budgets in hopes that the SGA will allocate more funds accordingly. It is a fight among organizations to get the highest possible funds.
Both parties agreed that a rolling budget is best, meaning money will be allocated to organizations at requested times throughout a given semester. Other students were more concerned with their tuition funds and student fees.
The Go Party had a solution for that: enlist a seventh student on the Committee on the Review of Student Fees, therefore making students the majority. Many were concerned that this committee, which budgets for the mandatory fees students must pay every semester, was lacking student input.
The Go Party outlined their platform in a 50-page document that included various problems facing the university. The strategies and solutions that would be utilized to correct all of them are called “Project Go”.
Their most prominent platforms include tackling the inefficiency of Nite Ride, a pick-up service offered by the university, by organizing volunteers from student groups to help in the case that a safe ride is needed during the dangerous hours of the night.
The most significant change that will be made in the future is the addition of 30 new positions to the SGA. Rather than having ten people complete multiple tasks, these new positions enable members to complete specific tasks. In addition, these positions allow those who did not win the election a chance of participating in the organization.
Because their campaign relied heavily on involving members of student organizations, the Go Party attracted many members that were leaders of student organizations prior to elections. However, many of the party’s candidates were not formerly members of the SGA.
“There’s going to be some benefits and some challenges,” incoming Vice President of Student Affairs, Liz Pandya said. “It’s beneficial because everyone has a lot of new and fresh ideas, but it will be challenging to work through the bureaucracy of the administration.”
A lot of the support came from student organizations, including various club sports teams, Greek organizations, cultural groups and more. By targeting the issues many of these groups are facing, more support was cultivated.
“It was helpful that we had a lot of newcomers that were involved in a lot of student groups,” Konigkramer said. The party also included members from Greek life and thus directed part of their platform at these students by creating a plan for fostering better relationships among off-campus students and the city council and police department.
Members of the party are hoping to lobby city council to require hard evidence to issue students noise violations as opposed to witness testimony, which is all that is currently required.
“I voted largely for members of the Go Party,” sophomore accounting major Camden Zacker said. “I liked that they were more hands-on in their tactics, by approaching individuals. They also seemed to have a clearer direction of where the SGA should be headed,” he said.
Pandya agrees this strategy was very helpful in securing a win. “We chose to spend our time explaining how we were going to do things.”
Regardless of what party students put in power, SGA members agree changes will be made only if they are the ones reaching out. “We are the liaisons to the administration,” Konigkramer said.
“We have a desire to make SGA something that is more responsive to student needs and connects to the students and makes it feel like a collective body,” Pandya said.
Â