By Caleb Callaway | Recently, results for the 2021-2022 Howard Payne University Student Government Association (SGA) elections were announced. Seth Becker and Parker Brown were elected president and vice president, respectively.
Parker Brown, SGA vice president-elect, said, “We are very excited for the new administration. It will be good to take the school and SGA in a different direction. We want to move the SGA away from being event focused to focusing more on campus improvement and infrastructure. We want to help students on a practical level.”
“While we haven’t taken office yet, we’re already been thinking about how we’re going to do the things we talked about,” Seth Becker, SGA president-elect, added.
Becker and Brown decided to campaign for the presidency and vice presidency to have a hands-on influence on campus.
“We had been talking about running for office for months. We decided to do a lot of campaigning and to be very professional in our approach,” Becker said.
Brown added, “I think we had really great messaging. We really got the word out to people and communicated really well. We had a strong social media presence and had a lot of flyers. Our campaign was very well received by a lot of people. We had a real passion to see what we could change in terms of the campus. Everyone is great at talking, but getting things done is sometimes more challenging. We saw running for office as a unique opportunity to make a tangible difference. It’s very easy to be comfortable, but sometimes you have to get passionate about things.”
Becker and Brown look forward to implementing new structures and ideas during their time in office.
“The SGA has been more interested in student involvement, but we don’t want to step on the toes of other organizations that do events. I think the Greek life organizations already host amazing events, so I would love to see SGA helping them with their events. However, I think what the SGA should do is move more towards campus improvements. We want students to come to us with their ideas. That is a great thing for students because it gives them an opportunity to share their ideas and it’s great for us because it lets us hear students’ feedback. I’d be very happy if students came to us every week with their ideas. We can’t do it all, but we have the resources to do a lot,” Becker said.
Both Becker and Brown believe that SGA’s role should transition from focusing on events to focusing on campus improvement.
“There’s no need for SGA to compete with Greek life or the other great organizations on campus. They do so many awesome things, so why have SGA compete with them when SGA can be in a more supportive role?” said Brown.
“We’re focusing on the specialization of what each group is good at,” Becker added.
Becker and Brown believe that the SGA will be instrumental in making changes on the HPU campus.
“SGA is a tool. When we look at Howard Payne University, we need to ask, “Why am I here?” If it is just a place where you attend classes and get a degree, there’s nothing that makes it uniquely better than any other college or university, but if you are bought in, you realize that it is about the community. We have the opportunity to have great relationships between peers, faculty, and administration. We can all work together to be bought into the student experience. SGA is an active and useful tool to have those important conversations with our student and faculty leaders,” Brown said.
Becker and Brown encourage students to bring their ideas to members of the SGA.
“We can’t do this by ourselves. We need people coming to us with their ideas and support. We need the student body to be involved,” Becker said.
Brown added, “Getting different perspectives will be very helpful for the SGA.”
Becker and Brown also encourage students to get involved directly by joining the SGA.
Becker said, “For people who want to get things done around campus and have lots of ambition, SGA is a great avenue. It’s great that at such a small school, everyone can be someone and get involved.”
“Half of life is just showing up… especially at SGA,” Brown added.