As a student attending the business meeting, I discovered that there is no organized student voice within the committee structure of the organization. This lack of representation creates a problem because the committees are responsible for submitting proposals to the body for a vote during the business meeting. Without voting privileges in the committees, student representatives who have the responsibility to vote in the general business meeting are ill informed and often unprepared to fully participate. They are not encouraged by the current structure to take part in the information sharing or policy-making process. On the day of the business meeting, I presented a proposal to the Constitution and By-Laws Committee to increase student representation, by way of vote, in each of the standing committees.
Student representation is needed in each of the twelve standing committees.
Student participants in the committees should have full voting rights. It is too easy to dismiss the input of the student population when the discourse is set in a non-responsive structure. Student participation and voting in the business meetings need to be encouraged by coaching staff. Moreover, student participation needs to be encouraged by the structure of the organization. The transient nature of two-year college students makes it too easy to exclude them from the process.