I've drafted 7 pieces of legislation that aim to make UNT more transparent, more equal, and more democratic for TAMS students. When I'm in the Senate, I'm going to introduce every single resolution on day one.
The UNT student government has a form for students to send in their concerns. However, it's not always clear what they're doing to raise those concerns and fix them. Under my plan, we will have an explicitly-defined course of action to take when students come to us.
This year, UNT thought it was acceptable to wait until the last moment to communicate important developments relating to TAMS. That can't happen anymore: our administration needs to be responsive to the concerns of the student body. Under my plan, the Senate will be able to hold special sessions where students can question both UNT and student government executives.
As I mentioned above, the student government has a student concerns form. However, UNT as a whole has nothing of the sort. How can they claim to care about us and our wellbeing if they don't even care enough to listen to our concerns? Under my plan, we will pressure the UNT administration into finally taking action on this issue.
This year, TAMS tried their best to spread awareness of the mental health options that they had for us, including meetings with Dr. Turnock. However, UNT didn't make an effort to inform us about further options even as many of us struggled with the new environment. Under my plan, we work towards increasing accessibility to these services.
The Student Senate has 45 seats, and out of those seats, TAMS is given a single one. This year, less than 20 of those seats were filled. It doesn't make sense that we're only given one seat to represent our concerns while other schools and colleges willingly leave theirs unfilled. Under my plan, TAMS students will be able to temporarily fill other colleges' unused Senate seats.
Next year, TAMS will have over 300 students spread across 6 different tracks and 2 grades. With all these differing views and interests, just having one person to represent everyone here won't cut it. Under my plan, we increase the number of TAMS Senate seats from one to three.
First-past-the-post voting is terrible: it leads to the spoiler effect, is unrepresentative of public opinion, and discourages more than two candidates from running for an office. Yet in most cases, it's what our student government uses to conduct its elections, meaning that someone can win their election without winning an outright majority. Under our plan, we will advise the student government Election Board to formally adopt instant-runoff voting.