How Will This Amendment Help?

A minimum of three things are needed to remedy the problems we are seeing in student involvement on our campus:

a) Create more opportunities for student involvement in the student government;

b) Enhance civic interest and motivation for participation in student government through structural means:
1) Improving the significance and power of the positions by reorganizing departments so as to create a meaningful balance of power between them, creating essential functions for each department;
2) Improving the appreciation and recognition and/or benefits for holding positions
3) A nonpartisan body charged with only the continual recruitment for and public awareness of these positions;
4) Make our student government as reflective of our city and state governments as possible.

c) Increased and enhanced promotion of both the AS experience and also of AS events and opportunities.

This proposal to create a Judiciary department and a Recruitment Officer would address the first two of these remedies. Creating a Judiciary as proposed here would create a minimum of 9, and potentially more, regular positions in the AS government. The proposed Recruitment Office would add at least one and possibly more positions.

This increased opportunity would create greater demand for student involvement simply by the additional positions, but also in the fact that students could bring any complaints to be heard more easily than with the current process, and therefore student participation in using the system will likely result as well. The strengthening of the institutions of student government will enhance the student interest by promoting justice and civil engagement and responsibility. The addition of a judiciary will enhance the perception of fairness, justice and due process at Sac State in the eyes of its students, enhancing the reputation, standing and stature of our school’s student government.

Other areas of improvement surround the benefits of involvement in student government.

The Recruitment office would be formed in part to help develop ideas on recognition and/or compensation necessary to draw significant interest in participation
There ought to be a public database on the website of all positions, the name and date of who held the office, searchable by name, etc. so to that future employers (or whomever) can verify civic participation in student government easily.
All participants ought to be recognized officially with some sort of certificate, plaque or other official recognition, and their record of service be maintained for verification. If this is currently done, it should be publicly declared and made available online.
Participants ought to receive other perks or benefits for their participation. Some ideas for these could include:

Free parking and/or preferred position parking
Meals or snacks provided during meetings
Free tickets and/or preferred seating at special campus events, plays, movies, concerts, etc.
Discounts at participating stores (i.e. bookstore, Union vendors, outside sponsors, etc.)
Cash stipends
Bio published in the Hornet
Free school ring or other school spirit items

The creation of the Recruitment department will be essential to generating student participation every semester. It will have specific techniques that it uses to systematically find, approach and interest potential candidates for all the various positions of student government, thereby ensuring robust general interest and participation in student self-governance.

Other areas of improvement in the bylaws need to be made as well, such as more clearly separating the legislative and executive bodies. Nevertheless, a judiciary can be added at this point without requiring that additional changes me made to the bylaws concurrently. This means we can move in steps toward a true civic model of government, but we should not hesitate to take the first step now.