Twenty thousand students. Five elected Student Association Executive Council members represent the expanding and increasingly diverse Mississippi State University student body for one year. These student leaders, along with four other members of executive council, 40 cabinet members and 37 senators make decisions that affect their peers on a day-to-day basis.
Over the past few years, SA has overseen reforms, including proposing the student email switch to BullyMail, forming the Dawg Pound, discussing possible tuition increases, reforming student election codes, resurrecting The Reveille, working to move teacher evaluations online and choosing Bulldog Bash headliners. 
Despite the large role the SA plays in event programming and administrative advocacy, less than a quarter of the student body votes to elect its representatives. In 2011, only 22.1 percent and 22.4 percent of students voted in the senate and executive council elections respectively, and last year, those numbers fell with only 16.5 percent of the student body voting to elect its senators and 20.1 percent voting in the executive election.
Eddie Keith, associate dean of students, said on every campus he is aware of, student government faces similar challenges. Student governments face misperceptions and low participation in elections across the country.
“I think on every campus there’s that challenge of getting people to feel like this is my government,” he said. “Of course, we look at America and the percentages of people who vote across the country; of course student governments are not the only governments that have that challenge.”
Ben Davidson, senior political science major, said he thinks SA elections tend to be a popularity contest, and that candidates may need the backing of a large organization to win, which is not necessarily bad.
“I usually vote because sometimes something on a candidate’s platform will catch my eye,” he said. “They (the SA) do make a difference. The biggest thing (I’ve seen them do) is reform the emails – it’s the best thing I’ve seen them do.”
Coleman Kimbrough, senior political science and philosophy double major, said he only votes for people who are in his fraternity and the only time he learns about candidates is when they visit his chapter meetings.
“It is absolutely a popularity contest … who can get their name in the subconscious of the most people,” he said. “I don’t know how much power (the members of SA) have, in terms of what they actually can do … It would be nice to publicize what they do and how much power they have.”
Shelby Balius, current SA president, said students on SA committees or general students may see SA do very little work, even though that is not the case.
“But once you get into the trenches of being on cabinet or exec, you see the Student Association not only does  programming for students’ entertainment but does an incredible amount of advocacy for students,” she said.
Rhett Hobart, former SA president, said social media has allowed students at Mississippi State University to feel more connected to the SA and what’s going on and to feel they can have more of an input in decisions.
“I feel like there definitely is an apathy towards the Student Association,” he said. “A lot of people have the idea that SA doesn’t do anything to help their concerns when in reality … people really underestimate the involvement of the SA in every decision that takes place on campus.”
Field Brown, philosophy and English double major, said he thinks the SA carries a Greek stereotype and, giving tours as a Roadrunner, receives questions from potential students about the importance of being Greek.
“Do you have to be Greek? … That’s what most families ask me – do you miss out on getting involved?” he said.
Morgan McDowell, SA senator for the College of Business and Balius’s opponent in last year’s presidential election, said leadership and experience should be the deciding factor in how students choose to vote.
“Shelby and I, we both had to run a campaign, we both had a certain amount of money we had to spend … Shelby spent less money than I did and she won,” he said. “Shelby’s non-Greek. She put in her time, she put in her effort, she gave all she had and she beat me fair and square, absolutely nothing to it. So a Greek stereotype? No, no. There is the idea of a Greek stereotype, but I don’t think it’s existent.”
Hank Flick, professor in the Department of Communication, worked with the SA since the ’70s and acts as the parliamentarian at senate meetings. Since the senators dress in business-attire, Greek letters do not appear as the senate conducts business.
“I don’t have numbers because we don’t take count (of the number of Greeks and non-Greeks in senate). It’s a demographic we’re not concerned with,” he said. “I was in a fraternity, and it’s very, very important that leadership is part of that training. Leadership in the house, leadership here, in different organizations on campus. They take it very, very serious. It’s emphasized.”
Becoming involved in other areas on campus, such as Greek organizations, can provide students with experience that translates into the decisions made in the SA, Flick said. Over the years, a more serious and diverse group has run for office.
“We’ve had such quality people here not get elected president that they don’t take it personal, they go in with high self-esteem and channel themselves off in other directions,” he said. “It’s never been any concern (that Balius isn’t Greek) because she acts so skillfully with any group. … The person with the best ideas, with the most heart, soles on the shoe to get the work done should get elected.”
Balius said she is one of two presidents in the 14 SEC schools who is non-Greek, which surprises advisers, presidents and other executive members in the SEC.
“They can’t believe we have a non-Greek president, much less an exec member. But then to look at a non-Greek female in that position makes them not believe who I am … and that’s so depressing to me because I don’t think it should be about the organization you represent going into an exec election,” she said. “It should be about the person who can best serve the students whether it be from the knowledge they have, from the passion they have for the position, but also the ideas that they have to better the experience. It’s so disappointing to me that that’s the only thing people can look at or think that is the only thing people look at because it is so much more important to look at the person and not what they have on their resume.”
Keith said in the past, MSU has had women, African-Americans and non-Greek members serve on the executive council and as SA president.
Sixteen percent of MSU undergraduates belong to fraternities or sororities, which have about 250 members each, he said. He said 250 out of 20,000 students is a fairly small number – and even if chapters join together that is only several thousand potential votes and not all members are guaranteed to vote the same way. Non-Greek affiliated students should be able to run and campaign more easily through advances in social media and email because it does not require as much manpower.
“I’ve talked to some of my colleagues at other universities that are more Greek than we are – that is to say they have a larger percentage of their undergraduates that are fraternity and sorority members. They talk about the distinction of Mississippi State …. you don’t have to be a fraternity or sorority member to participate in governance and activities on this campus,” he said. “I think maybe other people realize it more than we do, people at other universities, neighboring universities.”
Non-Greeks serve on SA, Balius said, but the turnout of people applying for positions or running for elections in the non-Greek community is few and far between.
“I hate to see (the lack of non-Greeks participating) because I happen to be one of those in the non-Greek community who said, well, I mean I’m going to give it a shot,” she said. ” Did I think I was going to win? … When Morgan and I were running, it was an every day occurrence that I would look at my campaign manager and go, the system is going to take over, there’s no way I’m going to win. But I still wanted to give it a shot.”
McDowell said, although he didn’t win, running for president last year was one of the best experiences of his life thus far because of the friendships he gained and experiences he had.
“What I think every student needs to understand is if they want to run for any type of office they need to do so and not worry about the funds, the funds will come. … If they want to do it, they need to do it,” McDowell said. “If you have the appropriate leadership experience and you’re passionate about this university, you need to run for office and you need to give it your all. That speaks volumes for your character.”
Courtney Harris, senator for the College of Arts and Sciences, said it is incredibly easy for anyone to become involved on campus, especially through SA committees, which can give students a taste of SA involvement. She said she believes the apathy students show toward the SA comes from more the fact that they do not know about the issues.
“Saying student government, it scares people off, but there’s some people out there who will try … who want to make a difference,” Harris said. “I think that’s what the Student Association is – a group of students who want to impact the student body, and they want to make a difference and they want to leave this school better than it was when they came in. And I think a lot of Student Association members have done that.”
When looking at potential representatives for SA executive positions, Hobart said students should look to see if candidates have experience in the SA, especially since many of SA’s projects are completed by successors to positions. He also said students should look at platforms to see if they have new ideas and if those ideas are possible.
“I think you have to really take a hard look at that and oftentimes if it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. But so many of the things on the platform can be accomplished in normal years,” Hobart said.
Balius said because SA has now absorbed Campus Activities Board, voters need to understand the SA is now in charge of governance, student advocacy and entertainment programming. She also said voters need to see if platform points are important enough to all 20,000 for the SA to spend time on because of SA’s time shortage.
The importance of having a plan to accomplish platform points, a candidate’s transparency to the student body and the ability to represent students’ concerns at all levels of the university should affect voters, Hobart said.
Hobart said he does not think winning a major SA position without having a diverse group of voters backing a candidate is possible.
“I think that’s a great thing because it speaks to our candidates, it says they are endorsed by a large part of campus, by all parts of campus,” he said. “If a student thinks that their vote doesn’t matter, that’s not true. Every vote in these elections count. I’ve seen elections in past … where one person won by 12 votes. A lot of times, these votes are close … so every single vote matters.”