The A-State Student Government Association passed two resolutions and proposed two more in its meeting Tuesday night. 

Sen. Reed Middleton’s resolution to name the red wolf statue in the roundabout on Aggie Road near the Welcome Center to Tiago, originally read Feb. 2, was passed in a vote by SGA during the meeting. 

The resolution to name the statue was not met with any discussion on the night, but Sen. Ellie Mayberry’s resolution to bring the program Swipe Out Hunger to campus did spark some discussion. 

Swipe Out Hunger is a program that would allow students to donate meal plan swipes to students without a meal plan. The program would be available to any type of A-State student, whether undergraduate, graduate, non-traditional and so on. 

“The way that we would be setting it up is that those who can receive the swipes are only those that do not currently have a meal plan,” Mayberry said. “If you have a meal plan you wouldn’t be eligible to receive these swipes.”

Due to how the meal plan system works at A-State, students who wanted to donate their swipes to the program could only choose to do so at the beginning of the semester and not at the end. 

“I’ve had a few different meetings with different people around campus,” Mayberry said. “It would be set up that swipes would be collected at the beginning of the semester. People could also apply at the beginning of the semester. Then those would be distributed among those applicants. New swipe drives would happen at the beginning of every semester.”

This could potentially be a problem as students with meal plans might not know how many swipes they need to make it through the semester, meaning they could hesitate on how many swipes to donate. 

Sen. Alex Young expressed this sentiment. 

“I was wondering if we could do (the drives) at the end as well,” Young asked. “I feel like more people would know if they could give swipes at the end of the semester, so they’d be more willing to donate.” 

Mayberry said being able to donate swipes at the end of the semester was her original intent, but accounting wise, the university keeps meal plans from one semester to the next separate so the carry over could not happen.  

Young also asked if there would be a system in place accounting for students who dropped their meal plan to take advantage of Swipe Out Hunger even if they weren’t students in need. 

“That is a legitimate concern and that is something we’ve discussed,” Mayberry said. “The thing is with any type of program there’s going to be people who abuse it. But, there will be an application process to hopefully vet against as much of that as possible so we don’t have people deciding to drop their meal plans and pick donated swipes instead.”

After the discussion, the resolution to bring Swipe Out Hunger did pass. Mayberry said she hopes to have the program implemented by this upcoming fall semester. 

After the passing of the statue naming and Swipe Out Hunger resolutions, Sen. Molly Grace Williams read her resolution to create a public forum on SGA’s web page for students to post their concerns to be addressed. 

This resolution would make it easy for students to have their concerns addressed by SGA by giving students a direct line of communication to SGA staffers. 

Students would have the option to remain anonymous on the forum. 

The next resolution read was another resolution by Middleton. This resolution proposed the creation of a new SGA position that would be called the local government representative. 

This local government representative would be an official liaison between SGA and the local government of Jonesboro. 

While SGA and the local government in Jonesboro do work together already, this would be an official senate appointed position. 

“In years past to my knowledge, various members of the staff and even the senate have gone before the city to serve as sort of the unofficial liaison, but this resolution in effect would create a permanent, new position for that singular person to act as that new representative,” Middleton said.

Both resolutions will be able to be voted on at SGA’s next meeting on March 2.

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