The Student Advisory Board serves as an advocate for student perspective to the Texas State University System Board of Regents. Members work to facilitate and represent their student body in making system-wide and campus specific decisions. The board is composed of the Student Government president and vice president of each campus represented in the Texas State University System.
Student Government President Connor Clegg and Vice President Jackie Merritt serve as the representatives for Texas State.
Merritt was unable to attend due to schedule conflicts with the Texas State Strutters. Student Government Sen. Brooklyn Boering filled in for Merritt. In addition to representing Texas State, Clegg serves as vice president of the Student Advisory Board.
The Board presented initiatives that each student government was proud of, then introduce two policies that each campus in the system to adopt and expand on.
Texas State representatives advocated for the open educational resources initiative that Student Government has been working on. Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials such as lectures, videos, quizzes and textbooks that are freely available online for student and lecturer use.
The board decided to do a system wide food drive. As a university system, Lamar, Sam Houston State, Sul Ross and Texas State Universities will be required to collect $5,000 worth of food for each university; one can is equivalent to one dollar. The food drive will run from September through December.
Money raised will be donated to local food banks in each of the universities areas. Texas State’s Student Government will be collecting cans in various locations such as The Quad and at weekly meetings. Their cans will be donated to the Hays County Food Bank.
The second policy requested that each student government come up with a plan to address campus safety due to the evolution of protest, most noticeably during the election season and most recently in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Clegg and Boering said that freedom of speech is a priority of student government, as well as campus safety.
Student Advisory Board meetings are simultaneous to Board of Regent meetings. The next set of meetings will take place at Sam Houston State November 16 and 17.