The Student Government Association (SGA) passed a resolution on Tuesday expressing its disapproval of a potential Chick-fil-A opening on campus, as a result of the company’s public stances on homosexuality and past homophobic remarks by the company’s leaders. This decision is consistent with statements that have been made by the SGA ever since the controversy came to light three years ago. The SGA has spoken on this issue, and the Editorial Board encourages the administration to respect the student voice and to refuse a Chick-fil-A location on campus. The SGA is the established voice of the Hopkins student community, and when it speaks, it speaks as representative of the student body in its entirety.
Students’ ability to have a voice in decisions like these is directly tied with the SGA’s power — if the administration chooses to disregard what the SGA is saying, then students effectively have no voice. We as undergraduates should demand that our SGA be heard on this and other issues. Otherwise why have a representative governing body at all?
That said, it is imperative that the student government truly act as a representative body, and the only way to ensure this is to, as students, actively engage with our campus leaders. If students oppose this resolution, they should lobby SGA senators to retract it and vote for candidates who also oppose it. Civic engagement with the SGA is the antidote to frustration with SGA’s decisions.
We believe that the solution to policy disagreements lies with the student body, and we encourage all students to be more active in communicating with their current SGA representatives. If you care about the Chick-fil-A issue or anything else, then talk to your senators and class presidents. If you think they aren’t representing your views well, then make sure that they know where you, their constituents, stand.
We also encourage students to have more interest in future candidates in upcoming elections. Questioning candidate platforms and voting accordingly will place our voice in the best possible hands. Ideally, this increased dynamic should stem from a genuine care for how (and by whom) we are being represented.
The Editorial Board recognizes that it is important to ensure that our government is strongly tied to its constituent students. But the only way the SGA can truly act as the voice of the student body is if the student body actively works to ensure the SGA acts as its voice.
