MSUSA discussed in town hall meeting

The role of the Minnesota State University Student Association (MSUSA) was more clearly explained during the last Student Government Association (SGA) Town Hall Meeting.

Jennifer Weil, State Chair of MSUSA, was invited to join the meeting and to discuss campus issues.

One of the roles of MSUSA is to represent student interests in the Minnesota Legislature and also to act as a liaison with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) to ensure that the opinions of the students are heard.

All students that attend one of the seven MnSCU universities, which SCSU is part of, are members of MSUSA, which collects 43 cents for every credit hour taken by a student.

Weil said that MSUSA is currently undergoing a strategic planning process to reevaluate their accomplishments and to determine the direction of the organization.

One of the four areas that MSUSA is currently focusing on is providing more information to students to ensure that students are aware of the issues that impact them.

They are also working on engaging students with policies and issues that might impact them and getting alumni more involved to provide better networking opportunities for students.

“Basically keeping good contact with our alums and bringing them back to be more part of our conferences,” Weil said.

“But also as possible mentors to our student leaders and our association so that we can build better connections.”

“We’re really fortunate to be in Minnesota, where it’s the best state for non-profits and we’ve the best non-profit community in the nation.”

The book rental program was brought up again at the meeting by representatives from SCSU Bookstores and the Textbook-1 bookstore.

Weil said that both Metropolitan State University and Minnesota State University Mankato are currently piloting book rental programs and are also looking into an online delivery system.

The books that are offered are mostly entry level, general education course textbooks.

Weil said she has heard of many students that would go to a class and see how long they can last without purchasing a textbook simply because the cost of textbooks was too high.

“What they’re really losing is not that extra grade but that extra knowledge,” Weil said.

MSUSA was able to get $500,000 put into rental programs during the last cycle and it was available to every institution that applied for the funding.

However, Weil said that for this budgetary cycle MSUSA will probably be evaluating the idea and may not push as much for funding.

“There’s a push for doing something,” Weil said. “I think it’s more of we just don’t know what the answer is.”

Terence Glommen-McCloskey, the Student Constitution Chair of SGA, was also present at the meeting.

SGA is planning to update their student constitution and McCloskey emphasized that the constitution defines both what SGA does and also student rights.

“The first three or four pages is all about students and the rest of the pages on how the student government protects that,” McCloskey said.

The student constitution is planned to be discussed more thoroughly by McCloskey in the upcoming SGA weekly meeting on Thursday.

The next SGA Town Hall meeting is planned to be hosted at 3 p.m. in the Mde’ Wakan room of the Atwood Memorial Center.

Students are welcome to attend and ask questions or provide feedback.