After 20.4% of the student body voted in the 2024-25 student body elections — compared to the 29.9% that voted in the 2023-24 elections — junior Ella Kucera, vice president of communications, said she hopes to increase awareness of the function of Elon University’s Student Government Association.
With the decrease in voter turnout for this past election, members of SGA, both current and former, said they hope they can increase voter turnout in future elections by educating the student body about what student government does and making itself more present on campus.
According to Kucera, part of SGA’s function on campus is creating legislation that can benefit the Elon community. This includes the creation of a free menstrual products pilot program using Aunt Flo pads and tampons with dispensers in bathrooms across campus in 2019. Additionally, SGA signed a bill on April 4 introducing a Narcan pilot program that consists of putting two doses of Narcan into neighborhood common buildings across campus.
“With Aunt Flo, Narcan is coming on to campus in the fall, and just, overall, they've done so many things to help the burdens of the community and just try and be the voice for the students,” Kucera said
In addition to creating and approving legislation, SGA is also in charge of funding student clubs and organizations. Megan Curling ’23, former vice president of finance, said she thinks that SGA’s most important function is securing funding for student organizations.
“At the end of the day, the most important function is getting students funding for their events,” Curling said. “If you didn't have that funding ability, I don't think that SGA would have as large an impact on the student body.”
Curling also said she thinks SGA’s financial function gives the organization a chance to work closely with other student organizations across campus.
“It works really well and creates a nice kind of bridge between the student government organization, as well as all the other organizations on campus,” Curling said.
Even though SGA’s financial function gives Elon students the opportunity to connect with specific members of SGA such as vice president of finance, Kucera said she thinks that the student body should know who is on SGA and what role they have in the organization.
“I think word of mouth is the first step of just having those in-person conversations,” Kucera said. “A big part of awareness is getting to know who exactly are the senators and who exactly is on exec.”
The student body should be more involved when it comes to engaging with SGA, Chloe Higgins, former speaker of the senate said.
“I always say that voting in SGA elections is the most local level of civic engagement,” Higgins said. “I feel like a lot of people just don't know why they should vote and why SGA is important, and I feel like that's definitely something that needs to change in the future.”
Higgins also believes it’s hard to increase awareness amongst the university when students aren’t interested in SGA.
“It's harder to reach the student body when they don't want to be reached,” Higgins said.
There are members of other student organizations — including her own — who aren’t aware of SGA’s function, Aleezah Adams, president of Elon’s Black Student Union and former SGA senator in the 2021-22 school year.
“I've heard a lot of students ask, ‘What does SGA do?’” Adams said. “Even people in BSU.”
While Adams said she has seen an improvement during the 2023 administration, she still thinks there is a lot more work to be done in order to increase student involvement and awareness.
“I think Britt specifically brought a lot of awareness just by personality, because a lot of people know him. But outside of knowing Britt, people don't know what SGA specifically does,” Adams said. “I think that there's a culture with SGA and that makes it a little bit exclusive.”
SGA could do more during new student orientation and partnering with other organizations, Adams said.
“It's not introduced to students when they first get here. It's not talked about during orientation, and this is one of the biggest organizations on campus,” Adams said. “Also, SGA doesn't do a great job partnering with other organizations on campus outside of funding them.”
However, with the way that SGA operates, it is not permitted to partner with organizations or program events outside of funding them, according to its bylaws.
Despite this, Kucera said she thinks students at Elon often have too much going on to care about what SGA is doing.
“Some students just have too much on their plates to really care or to put the effort into researching or looking out or talking about it,” Kucera said. “We're all college students, we're all going through stuff. It happens.”
Kucera said even though students are often immersed in their own lives, one of the most impactful ways they can get involved with SGA is by simply voting in the student body elections.
“I think it's going to be really important those first couple weeks of school at the org fair,” Kucera said. “Just getting people aware of what's going on and throwing it to their face in the most simple way.”