The Student Government Association (SGA) at Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) recently held its elections and 27 people were elected to serve as representatives of the TAMUK student body.
SGA is a student run organization on TAMUK’s campus which “serves as the official voice of the student body and attempts to better the student experience at the university. Both a governing body and advocacy group, Student Government is involved in policy-making, adjudication, programming, lobbying, community service, and numerous other activities. The organization is a clearing house for concerns from students and answers from administrators,” according to the SGA page on the TAMUK website.
At the end of every semester, SGA holds elections for Senator positions from each college and each class. There are also positions in the SGA Executive branch, such as the President or Secretary that are elected.
To be a candidate for election as a Senator or a member of the Executive branch, any TAMUK student can fill out an application for the position of their choice and submit it to the SGA office. This semester, elections were held in April. In total, there were 21 students elected are listed as following:
Taylor Molina, Sophomore Class Senator; Rendon Itzian and Katrina Sanchez, Junior Class Senators; Christopher Aguirre, Ryan Hinojosa and Lori Ramos, Senior Class Senators; Sarjina Niraula, Graduate Class Senator; Erik Perez, Senator at Large; Nina Lazaro and Sofia Pena, Senators for the College of Agricultures; Sarah Bennett, Jocelyn Gonzalez, Bryanna Montano, Sarah Ramos, and Carle Straube, Senators for the College of Arts and Sciences; Matthew Kingman, Senator for the College of Business; Katelyn Buse, Alexandra Elizondo, Rick Mendez Jr., Lidia Morales, and Sally Romero, Senators for the College of Engineering.
In the Executive Branch, six students were elected. They are listed as the following: Ruben A. Martinez, President; Graham Castor, Vice-President; Kyra Kurapati, Treasurer; Katrina Sanchez, Senator Pro-Tempore; Christopher Aguirre, Greek Commissioner; and Lori Ramos, Student Organization Advisory Liaison.
Martinez is the newly elected President of SGA. Martinez has been a member of SGA for two years. During this time, he has served as a Freshman Class Senator and as the Vice-President of SGA for the 2017-2018 academic year. He decided to run for president this election period to fix issues he has seen on the TAMUK campus.
“We’ve tried our hardest to make some changes and I think that serving as President will allow me to get more involved and allow me to see those…issues that we have on campus and actually try to change those problems,” Martinez said.
During his presidency, there are a few things on Martinez’s agenda that he wishes to accomplish. One being to improve communication on campus.
“I think one of the biggest problems here on this campus is communication whether that’s attending events [or] conferences. And, hopefully I’m trying to seek out some kind of things where we can have a kind of platform where we can all come or see where we can put in a process where…you’re holding an event so you have to put it on this calendar so you can increase the involvement from our students to these events,” Martinez said.
He also wants to grow SGA and its visibility on campus and inform the TAMUK student body about what the association does and how they can get involved.
Castor, the new SGA vice president also wishes to inform the student body about SGA. “There’s too many people that have no idea what student government is and a good chunk of people that have no idea what government is. So, that’s going to be our major focus…to make sure that people know that [SGA] exists,” Castor said.
Castor also wants to increase community outreach and develop a better relationship between the university and Kingsville.
While elections for SGA have already passed, the association is stilling looking to fill several positions. For any TAMUK students interested in learning more about SGA or being elected into a vacant position, they can visit the SGA office in the Memorial Student Union Building to fill out an application. Elections will be held once again at the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester.