Sitting around the table are student representatives, each equipped with their own set of questions and potential answers for all the school’s issues. Each student sits with their right hand raised taking an oath as a member of student government, dedicating themselves to the improvement of the school. Among them are students with multiple jobs, dual enrollment, sports scholarships and a diverse set of histories and circumstances that led them to this table. This table, mostly full of senators from each grade, still has a couple of seats left open.
Post-COVID has been difficult for all Colorado colleges, especially for the University of Northern Colorado. Fall enrollment in 2019 was just under 13,000, but this fall sees its total student headcount at just under 9,000. A 31% decrease since the semester before COVID. Comparatively, UCCS enrollment has only decreased 8.6%, and both Boulder and CSU have grown in that same time period.
UNC’s student government organization, SGA, has struggled to return to shape as well. This semester alone there are still six open seats across all SGA positions, including a position for senator of the Monfort College of Business. The freshmen elections, the only elections that take place at the beginning of the semester instead of during the spring, only had four candidates run for four seats. With no opposition to the candidates, there was no reason for any of the freshmen to campaign. Voting closed before any freshmen made any appearances as potential senate members.
“This group of freshmen is actually really engaged on campus, but still not as much as it used to be,” SGA Parliamentarian Joshua Rudnik said. “We really just prioritize getting people involved at this point. It’s happening all across campus really, but we’re having a hard time getting young people involved."
A lack of involvement from the student body is not the only difficulty that SGA faces.
Historically, SGA senator members have struggled to find meaningful work in their positions. To senior senator and ex-SGA Vice President Shayla Bermudez, this is by design.
“We are only as effective as the student body lets us be. So, if nobody knows about us and nobody cares about us, we effectively have no power," Bermudez said. "It [SGA] sounds super cool because we have a room and a big budget, but we can only do with that what the student body will let us and that starts off with them knowing what we are, what we do and caring."
Bermudez’s sentiment was echoed by ex-senator Ethan Weatherwax, who was a senator during the Fall 2023 school year.
“I was a sophomore senator when I was there. I didn’t spend much time there, but it was cool, and we got some stuff done," Weatherwax said. "Although I didn’t see many changes while I was there, they did some stuff to increase engagement which I thought was cool."
Engagement being a problem is not unique to SGA. The school at large has been dealing with lack of engagement with school-related events and student participation. When addressing SGA’s senators and executive branch, Andy Feinstein made it a point of emphasis to address lack of student participation, something he hopes to tackle with the help of SGA.
“I want to see students have more fun. I want to see more parties and concerts and food events. I want to see more students at our athletic events. I want to see the whole student body more engaged on our campus… So more than anything I want to see our student body more involved,” Feinstein said.
How SGA can deliver on that is the question. It is a goal SGA has been dealing with since Covid; how do we move students to engage? In an attempt to answer that question SGA has underwent multiple structural changes since 2020 and is gearing up to go under another with that goal in mind. This time around, Delainey Davison, current SGA president, and her goals are headlining the restructure.
“Our first goal is to be more visible on campus, just being more accessible to students," Davison said. "And our other goal is to be more transparent with students on campus, with what we can be as far as like what’s going on at the higher level… We have the opportunity to influence decisions that affect students."
These previous restructurings have had varying degrees of success. The last restructuring was cemented on Feb. 22, 2023, when the current SGA constitution went into place. At the helm was Erin Pettorino, the SGA president from the 2023 spring semester to the end of 2024.
She was a member of the senate before her elevated role in the legislative branch and was critical in helping SGA take off in its new form.
“We went from a student senate to a three-body system student government association. We went from being represented by only colleges, to classes and by college,” Pettorino said. “The year I was president we went through a lot of growing pains with the change and figuring out how our new structure impacted the work we could do. I think we did have some power and influence, but we were still learning how to utilize it correctly.”
This change was initiated to more successfully represent the student body of UNC.
“So, in 2022-23 school year, they had changed it from a student senate to a student government just because of the structural differences. It seemed more fitting for UNC. Then we altered our bylaws last year to include a section about all of our documents being accessible to the public and just open and available,” Davison said.
These changes don’t just happen though. It is a difficult process to change the SGA constitution in any way. SGA as an organization is a part of the larger branch of the school, student affairs. While SGA might hypothetically work as the mouthpiece for the student body, if they want to change how they go about doing so, the constitutional changes must be approved by the Board of Trustees.
“The way that we alter our constitution... it has to go through the student body and the Board of Trustees, so just making sure that we are accurately representing them," Davison said. “So, just anything that is in our constitution, that change has to go through that, since we're, like, under them in a way.”
Davison and her student government, as well as Audra Yocum, the student trustee, face a two-front battle. They have to both accurately gather the wants and needs of the student body, who might not always be invested in using SGA as a tool, and then reconcile these wants and needs with upper UNC management. While that position might prove to be difficult, it is not because of a lack of cooperation. Vice President of Student Affairs Keith Humphrey highlighted how important university and SGA communication is.
“Student government, which even though it's internal to the university, I view them as very independent. So, part of my role is to hear the voice of the students through folks like Delainey and Audra and what their goals are and figure out how to help them bring them to life. So, sometimes they're in sync, and sometimes in my career, they haven't been in sync. But still, my job is to help student government leaders achieve their goals and make them happen,” Humphrey said.
SGA won’t speak for the student body base unless the student body base comes to them for representation. Even if that representation isn’t what the university wants to hear.
“The final decision when it comes to university-wide policies is up to them. But we can definitely support students advocating for change and sort of provide some backing to that,” Davison said.
According to both Davison and Humphrey, a situation like that hasn’t manifested at UNC, but if it were to, they would be ready to deal with the divisions in opinion.
“We always hope to not get to a place of disagreement with student government. That rarely happens because we are in plenty of proactive conversations in advance," Humphrey said. "We try to operate on a no surprises rule… So if students have a concern, we certainly don't want to dismiss it, but we want to fully understand it, figure it out and what the best pathway for it is together."
So, the main challenge Davison and her administration face is getting the student body to see them as the tool that they are.
“Visibility has always been one of our goals where we have just struggled, like getting our feet on the ground and going up and having people recognize us. Most of the people that I ask don't even know that we have a student government on campus. And so that's always been a big goal. We're trying to change that," Davison said. "And then, with the transparency part, that's something that I've always felt was very important. Students don't like not knowing what's going on and feeling like everything's done behind closed doors when it's really not."
The changes that Davison is implementing are all centered around that goal, to foster trust and involvement within student government from around the school. If SGA is able to correctly fill the role as student representatives, then they are able to fight for student’s needs at the highest levels. Davison’s potential changes all circle around that fact.
“We've been talking about maybe adopting some other organizations on campus just to build a more robust SGA. That's more aligned with what other universities look like…" Davison said. "Probably filling some gaps that the university may have and making sure that we're supporting other organizations that might not do well with the budget cuts. Even despite everything going on, we're going to stay here.”
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