By RAEGAN NEUFELD
Tiger Media Network
Senators and executive staff members spent part of the Student Government Association meeting Thursday night learning about the importance of local elections.
Sen. Madison Albers, presenting on behalf of the advocacy group Loud Light, spoke about the upcoming Hays USD 489 Board of Education and Hays City Commission elections and how they as college students are affected by the results.
“If any of you aren’t registered to vote here, I would highly recommend it,” she said. “This is where you’re spending a lot of your tax dollars. Ellis County just had a sales tax raise, so you do have a reason to vote here. A lot of the things that affect you are the result of local elections, so it’s important to get out and vote.”
According to Albers, the last day for voter registration before the Nov. 7 elections is Oct. 17. Fort Hays students can re-register to be able to vote in Ellis County, or request a mail-in ballot for elections happening in their hometown.
“There are races going on in all of the counties about all sorts of different things, like Wichita has a huge mayoral race coming up,” Albers said. “So definitely look at your county if you’re not registered here.”
Voting information and resources can be found on the Loud Light website and ksvotes.org. SGA and the Fort Hays chapter of the American Democracy Project will also be hosting voter registration events on campus in the future.
Other topics of discussion at the meeting included providing free hygiene products in the academic buildings and increasing security measures on campus. President Ella Burrows addressed both in her report.
Providing free hygiene products in the bathrooms of academic buildings is an idea Burrows began working on last year and has focused more on this year. She reported she received an estimate of $18,000 to install dispensers and provide products in 60 bathrooms.
“What I’m hoping we can do is receive several grants to get the cost down to about $10,000 for the first year and the implementation process,” she said. “After that initial year, it would be just $2,000 to cover the cost of those products.”
As for the security cameras, Burrows said the University Police Department is getting a quote to determine the cost of security cameras to put in parking lots.
“The biggest issue is the cost of footage storage and the bandwidth of it right now, so they’re hoping to get a cost breakdown and then go from there,” she said.
The next SGA meeting will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 21 in the Black and Gold Room of the Memorial Union.