SGA legislative process can take years to see change
It’s been almost four years since Macomb senior Rebecca Detroyer and other members of the Student Government Association brainstormed the idea of a Gender Equity Center on campus.
The center would serve to increase “awareness and understanding of issues pertaining to gender inequalities” and to highlight the “societal dynamics still in place that continue to encourage gender inequality,” according to Detroyer’s bill.
The bill is just one of 12 being worked on by SGA, which include increasing the base allotment of printing services for students on campus, a call to install styrofoam recycling containers on campus and more.
Students in SGA aren’t the only ones who can draft legislation, said President Chuck Mahone.
“(A piece of legislation) generally starts out as a student concern. It can be positive or negative concern — really anything that can be addressed by the university,” he said. “Only someone in SGA can introduce it, however. This can be anyone from a senator to an SGA representative from their Registered Student Organization.”
All legislation must fit specific criteria, which includes background information on the proposed bill, any relevant data or statistics pertaining to the concern and information on how other “peer institutions” have dealt with a similar problem.Because of the requirements a bill must fit, an informational PowerPoint on how to format legislation can be found on found on SGA's Orgsync page.
The reason for the formatting is to “streamline the process” of having the house and senate review the bill.
“If for some reason a bill comes before the body and it’s not in line with what our current practices are, we’ll table the bill, meet with the author and work out what the discrepancies are so they can bring it back again before the body,” Mahone said. “Its happened before and it’s something we’re happy to (help with).”
Mahone said if that’s not enough, students can come by the SGA office in the basement of the Bovee University Center and ask for his help personally.
From there, it will be introduced before both the SGA house and senate. Members of the bodies will vote on if they believe the legislation has merit. If it passes, SGA then works with administration to assess its feasibility.
The process is very long and can take years before a proposed resolution becomes a university policy. Members of SGA will sometimes spend their entire college careers working toward the passing of SGA legislation, like Detroyer’s.
“The bill had been an idea for almost 40 years until the first resolution was made and submitted my freshman year,” Detroyer said. “After the resolution was passed, we had to draft proposals until we came to what we have now. The purpose of my bill is to assist in not only education about gender inequality, but also programming, activism and support services for individuals in regards to gender related issues.”
Mahone said the time between when legislation is passed and when it is implemented is to ensure quality.
“Before, people put forth a bill before they even did (research),” Mahone said. “Now they have half the solution already done before they even bring it in front of the (house and senate).”
