The 48th Legislature of the Student Government Association (SGA) passed their first legislation of the school year. SGA unanimously passed a resolution to support Student Programming Council (SPC) utilizing EmoryCard technology to compile anonymized data at large events and unanimously appointed College junior Reuben Lack as the Elections Board Chair.
SGA President and College junior Jon Darby, who is also a member of SPC, spoke on behalf of SPC. He said the goal of the resolution was for SPC to gather demographic information about attendees in order to adapt programming to cater to under-served populations of the University.
According to Darby, SPC currently does not have the technology to ascertain event attendance demographics. The proposed resolution would allow SPC to use the ID numbers processed from the EmoryCard to compile data on division of enrollment, class year, whether a student lives on or off campus, ethnicity and gender. After the data is compiled, the ID numbers would be deleted and the demographic information would be sent back to SPC for their use.
The resolution states that anonymized data will only be compiled in events of 500 or more attendees.
Some members of the Legislature voiced their concerns about what SPC will do with this information and whether it will be used to effectively change programming.
Specifically, SGA School of Law Representative third-year law student JJ Gonzales asked why SPC wanted information about ethnicity and gender.
Darby responded that under-served populations of the University can be anyone, and the purpose of the data is to determine what those populations are.
Due to legislators' concerns about students not wanting their information compiled, SGA added an amendment to the resolution where students have the option to opt out. The amendment was approved unanimously.
The resolution also stipulates that the data is published no later than three weeks after the event.
However, some members of the Legislature, like SGA Junior Representative and College junior Cam Williamson, were concerned that the language was not specific enough to ensure the data would be published. As a result, the Legislature also voted to amend the resolution to include that SPC must include the data they collected in their annual budget cycle report.
The Legislature also unanimously voted to amend the resolution to include all types of EmoryCard readers, including proximity readers ("tap-in" system) and magnetic strips (sliding system).
Some legislators also noted that SPC should be held accountable to ensure that the information is used productively to change programming.
Director of the Center for Student Leadership and Community Engagement and SGA Faculty Advisor Matt Garrett answered that expecting SPC to respond immediately to collected data is infeasible because events are planned many months in advance.
Thus, the third amendment of the resolution also stipulates that along with a report of the data in their budget report, SPC must also publish a narrative explaining how they intend to the responsive to the data in future events.
The third amendment was approved unanimously.
The Legislature unanimously approved the resolution to allow SPC to compile anonymized data at large events for future programming.
SGA also discussed Lack's confirmation as the Elections Board Chief.
The Elections Board is a student advisory board that presides over University elections.
Lack said he has been serving as the Interim Elections Board Chair since May, and he has also served as the College Council (CC) Budget Chair and a CC Legislator in the past.
He was confirmed as Elections Board Chair unanimously.
–By Rupsha Basu, News Editor
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