Student Association representatives, as part of their duties, attend campus subcommittee’s meetings across campus in order to provide a student voice. Three years ago, in a committee which dealt with transportation and made recommendations to the Parking and Transit Services department and Mississippi State administration and included faculty and support staff as members, a change was proposed and passed to alter the parking fines structure on campus for students. This proposal would have more than doubled the price of student parking tickets. Because this recommendation was proposed on the committee amidst a transition period for SA councils, members were not present at this particular meeting.
 A member of SA exec became aware that this recommendation had passed the committee and was moving forward to be proposed to campus officials and parking services. Recognizing the impact this possible amendment to the system would have on the general student body, the SA member approached campus officials on behalf of the student body, which led to the recommendation being thrown out.
Rhett Hobart, former SA president, said that he used this moment to illustrate to his former staff the importance of SA.
“Leading up to that entire time before the SA representative spoke, everything looked like it was going to be recommended … not to say that would ever happen, (and) it could have gotten stopped in other ways as well, but the role that the SA has in so many meetings across campus, no matter what level that the meetings are, is oftentimes very underestimated,” he said. “A lot of people have this negative perception of what the SA does because they don’t see things oftentimes, but so many things that the SA  does are things you’ll never see because they never happen, and it’s stopping things that could possibly happen through subcommittees across campus that could negatively affect students or making things happen that benefit students.”
As part of the president and executive council’s duties to represent the student body, they meet with the mayor of Starkville, the university president and the provost, as well as other officials, at least once a month.
Hayden Nix, director of Environmental Affairs on cabinet, said he interprets the impression from students as they do not understand the SA does play a vital role in the different aspects of university policies and life. In order to fight this perception, he said cabinet talks about ways to get students involved on campus.
“(The perception of students toward the SA can change by) getting the knowledge out to show people that the Student Association is here for the students and not just necessarily an operation that happens in the background and has no affiliation with student life … I want to show people we are here for them,” he said.
Eddie Keith, associate dean of students, said if a student has a particular interest or cause, he or she is not required to run for office to be an integral part of the SA because the most important function of the organization is to give students a voice.
“You simply have to have one narrow focus that the SA addresses or that you engage the SA in and persuade them to address … and that makes a difference,” he said. “Every committee and every meeting is not going to be a forum … you can’t send everybody, so you send representatives. … People want to know what students think. Those are student issues that we address. … Student members are critical (to standing committees). … And I think the average student probably doesn’t know that.”
Shelby Balius, SA president, said an SA member sits on executive council, dean’s council and associate dean’s council, all three of which are the approving bodies of academic operating policies and deal with issues such as class attendance, course fees, the honor code and teacher evaluations.
The work the SA does with the university, which is all-encompassing, is hard for the average student to fully understand, she said.
“I think that the tangibility of being able to see or being able to attend an event makes it much easier for a student to see the programming side of the Student Association, but you also look at the advocacy we do for students and the projects that we do when it comes to academic policies or operating policies within the university, students are not able to see the progress we are making with those for two reasons,” Balius said. “One, it does not directly show itself in their daily life. But also, the initiatives we are working on and the projects we do with these policies, takes such a long time … we are a generation of instant gratification. And that is one of the biggest challenges this organization faces.”
Moving teacher evaluations online, for example, will remain an ongoing process that has been a part of past administrations and will be carried on throughout the next several administrations. In order to achieve a long term goal, she said, several short-term objectives need to be constructed.
“Our first short-term goal was getting the teacher evaluations piece up for review. Then, it was revisiting with the teacher evaluations committee the effectiveness of the evaluations at that point. Then, it became we want to put the evaluations online to save money, to be more efficient, to make them more accessible to students and, hopefully, increase the response rate by students,” she said. “That particular short-term goal, we accomplished this past semester, and now this semester there will be a small group of faculty members that will pilot the system.”
These faculty members will most likely be those who teach multiple sections of a class and then have one section’s evaluations go online and one section’s be in person to compare response rates to test the effectiveness of the system before the entire process is converted to online.
When working on a project such as this or a syllabus bank, which was another item on Balius’s presidential platform, she said policy affects so many groups on campus that until each of those publics can be served and are on the same page, the SA cannot gain any ground.
“It’s a matter of informing them, it’s a matter of getting buy in from them, and then it’s a matter of getting the work done,” she said.
Each new administration faces the challenge of a steep learning curve, which further stunts the time each executive council has to work on projects.
Transition, the time period in which the current administration passes information to the next, becomes essential because most projects cannot be carried out in a year. Along with transition, by having repeating members on executive councils from year-to-year, help complete short-term goals that will serve long-term projects.
“I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve had such great success on many initiatives in the last five or six years – because each president that’s been elected has served on executive council the year before,” she said.
Balius said another challenge in working on executive council is the unknown terrain that comes with the job. Neon Trees, for example, canceled playing at Bulldog Bash this year 17 days out from the event.
“I’m sitting here now a year later, and I had all of these goals coming into the presidency, all of the things that were on my platform that I have worked for sure, definitely have made steps in the positive direction for each … Little did I know until I got into the position, how long term these initiatives would be,” she said. “It’s still something that you have to prioritize your time in – what you’re going to spend time on by how many people it’s going to affect.”
Keith said there is a two-edged sword in the SA promoting the advocacy and work it does for students – some may see it as resume padding, even though SA members are trying to explain their relevance to the student body.
“Not everything benefits every student in every situation. I can’t imagine there are not several things that the SA has done that would not benefit every student to some degree,” he said. “When you’re a part of it, you feel frustrated because people don’t know and want to extol your virtues and yet that comes across outsiders so to speak as self-aggrandizing in some way.”
Hobart said on many university campuses, student governments do not have the same involvement as MSU’s SA, which may be one reason students do not realize the level of involvement SA officials have.
“(Involvement has) really grown here, and I think that’s because the university really respects the opinion of the SA and that we do everything in our power to best represent the interest of students,” he said. “I think you will see that apathy continues to lessen. I think you’ll continue to see more students continue to feel more engaged with the Student Association and realize we are presenting their concerns.”