Student Government Association

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The Student Government Association is the governing body of the students at the Missouri Academy. Most everything done at the Academy, from Prom to Policy revisions, comes from SGA, originating in a committee and manifesting itself in the General Assembly.

SGA News

Officers for the 2013-2014 Executive Board

• President - Tyler Stodden
• Vice President - Charles Yoo
• Secretary - Rose Marinaro
• Treasurer - Sarah Minkler
• First Year Executive - William Koh

Officers for the 2012-2013 Executive Board

• President - Nabig Chaudhry
• Vice President - Avery Welker
• Secretary - Caroline Kim
• Treasurer - Bo Hyun Koo
• First Year Executive - Ray Choi

Officers for the 2011-2012 Executive Board

• President - Jeremiah Robertson
• Vice President - Jesse Pyatt
• Secretary - Carl Slagle
• Treasurer - Chris Everett
• First year Executive - Nabig Chaudhry

Officers for the 2010-2011 Executive Board Note: The positions of Vice President of Internal Affairs and Vice President of External Affairs were consolidated into one position (Vice President) following the 2009-2010 school year.

• President - Garrett Meyer
• Vice President - Jillian Bueno
• Secretary - Jennie Ransom
• Treasurer - Peter Sable
• First Year Executive - Jeremiah Robertson

Officers for the 2009-2010 Executive Board

• President - Clayton Buback
• Vice President of Internal Affairs - Nathan Engle
• Vice President of External Affairs - Shivani Singh
• Secretary - Erica Smith/ Jayde Moran (May Session only)
• Treasurer - Penny Wang
• First Year Executive - Jillian Bueno

Officers of the 2008-2009 Executive Board

• President - Phillip Venice
• Vice President of Internal Affairs - Cameron Wolschlaeger
• Vice President of External Affairs - Deanna MacMillan (First Semester), Maggie Doerge (Second Semester)
• Secretary - Amanda Foster
• Treasurer - George Ransom

Components of the SGA

The SGA is made up of:

• Executive Officers
  • President
  • Vice President
  • Secretary
  • Treasurer
  • First Year Executive
  • Wing Representative President
• Special Members
  • Presidential appointments
    • Parliamentarian
    • Association of Consortium of Student Governments (ACSG) Representative
    • Technology Adviser
    • Student Senate Representative
    • Residence Hall Association Head Delegate
  • Vice Presidential appointments
    • Committee chairs
• Wing Representatives
• Advisor
• Committees
  • Academic Interests Committee
  • Institutional Advancement Committee
  • Residential Life Committee
  • Second Year Experience
  • Student Activities Committee

Executive Board

The Executive Board ensures that the performance of the SGA is at an acceptable quality. The Executive Board is voted upon by the student body has many responsibilities. The Executive Board is made up of:

President

The current President of SGA is Tyler Stodden.

Duties:

• Presides over the SGA regular meetings, executive meetings, and open meetings.
• Calls for special meetings of SGA with the simple majority approval of the Executive Board.
• Votes in the case of a tie of a vote of the Executive Board.
• Creates ad hoc committees.
• Is the channel of communication between SGA and the Missouri Academy Staff, Faculty, and Students, and all external communications including outside committees and organizations.
• Can issue Executive Orders of necessity for anything not listed in the Constitution of the Missouri Academy Student Government Association.
• Prepares all SGA meeting agendas, for all meetings held.
• Prepares the SGA vision for the year (within the first month of held general assembly meetings).
• Appoints or removes special presidentially-appointed positions.
• Can hold open or closed forum meetings of the student body of which attendance is not required.

Vice President

The current Vice President of SGA is Charles Yoo.

Duties:

• Is the coordinator of the standing committees of SGA.
• Nominates a chairperson (or chairpersons) for the standing committees of SGA, subject to simple majority vote of the SGA voting members.
• Serves all standing committees and oversees as an ex-officio member.
• Acts as the President in the case that the President is temporarily unable to serve or is removed from office.
• Appoints chairpersons to the standing committees in the event that one does not have a chairperson.
• Serves as Secretary if he/she is unable to do so.
• Appoints Wing Representatives in the event a wing does not have one.
• Removes a committee chairperson in the event the VP perceives that the chairperson is not completing their duties as stated in the MASGA Constitution.

Secretary

The current Secretary of SGA is Rose Marinaro.

Duties:

• Keeps minutes of all meetings of SGA.
• Takes roll at all meetings of SGA.
• Makes minutes electronically accessible within 24 hours of the meeting.
• Notifies any SGA member within 24 hours of their removal.
• Excuses any member from a meeting at their discretion if notified within 24 hours of the meeting occurrence.
• Maintains the SGA bulletin board until the First Year Executive is elected.
• Maintains all documents and reports and will make all papers available when requested.

Treasurer

The current Treasurer of SGA is Sarah Minkler.

Duties:

• Prepares the budget for the year.
• Keeps the record of spending and income and oversees all transactions.
• Reports to SGA the: balance, incomes, and debts.
• Makes the record of SGA balance public upon request.
• Serves as the chair of the Financial Commission.

First Year Executive

The current First Year Executive of SGA is William Koh. The First Year Executive is elected by the entirety of the First Year class.

Duties:

• Maintains the SGA bulletin board.
• Helps the incoming Executive Board transition to their positions.
• Maintains the SGA Facebook page.
• Is in charge of planning the Second Year Appreciation Dinner held at the end of the academic year.
• Is the liaison between the first year class and the Executive Board.
• May hold open or closed meeting of the first year class of which attendance is not mandatory.

Wing Representative President

The position of Wing Representative President is rotating, changing roughly once a month. Each Wing Rep. get a turn at the position, and the order is chosen randomly.

Duties:

• Presides over the Wing Representative Council.
• Serves as the liaison between residential wings, all SGA committees, and the Executive Board.
• Votes only in the case of a tie of the General Assembly on legislation.
• The position of the Wing Representative President is divided equally between the Wing Representatives.

Special Members

Special Members are appointed by the Vice President.

Student Senate Representative

The current Student Senate Representative of SGA is yet to be determined.

Duties:

• Acts as the liaison between the Academy students to the Northwest Student Senate.
• Gives a report of the Student Senate proceedings at each General Assembly meeting.

Parliamentarian

The current Parliamentarian of SGA is Larin Fielder.

Duties:

• Enforces all rules and regulations stated in the MASGA Constitution, the Bylaws, and Parliamentary Procedure.
• Is the sole interpreter of the MASGA Constitution, the Bylaws, and Parliamentary Procedure.
• Chairs the Elections and Appeals Committee.

Residence Hall Association Head Delegate

The current Residence Hall Association Head Delegate is Lindsey Kirkorian.

Duties:

• Leads two other delegates, who collectively represent the SGA at all meeting of the Residence Hall Association (RHA).
• Gives a report of the proceedings of RHA at each General Assembly meeting.

Committee Chairman

The Chairman of the SGA committees are listed here.

Duties for all Committee Chairmen:

• Presides over all committee meetings.
• Keeps all minutes of the meeting and must report those minutes to the Vice President before the next General Assembly meeting.
• Keeps a record of attendance and reports it to the Secretary.
• Gives the report of the last meeting to the general assembly at the regular General Assembly meeting.
• Has the same abilities of a regular voting member.
• Assists the incoming Vice President on selecting a committee chairperson for the next year.

Wing Representatives

Wing Representatives are the bulk of MASGA. Wing reps take the information they gather from the SGA meetings and disperse it to separate wings and then brings their wing's opinions to the SGA meetings.

Current Wing Representatives

• 2nd East
  • Mariah Teague

• 2nd South
  • Claire Crossnoe

• 3rd North
  • Cher-Xa Thao
• 3rd South
  • Demetrius Williams

• 4th Floor
  • Yeonji Kim

Duties:

• Reports the proceedings of General Assembly meetings to their respective wings at their wing meetings.
• Are the sole members of the Wing Games Committee and organizes a monthly wing game.
• The Wing Representative Council picks two students per semester for the MARS Award (Missouri Academy Recognition of Student Award).

Associated Members

Associated Members are members of the Student Government Association that were not elected to SGA. Any student of the Missouri Academy may become an Associated Member of SGA if they attend three general assembly meetings and three standing committee meetings (of the same committee). Associated Members must attend all SGA general assembly meetings and a minimum of one committee meeting a week. If an Associated Member does not fulfill these requirements and those stated in the MASGA Constitution and Bylaws, they are subject to removal.

Advisor

The SGA Advisor is the person who sits in our meetings and makes sure everything going on is legitimate. The Advisor is Josh Rector.

Duties:

• Attends all SGA meetings
• Works with the Treasurer on the budget
• Okays everything going through SGA
• Acts as the liaison between the Staff and SGA

Committees

Most of the SGA business is supposed to run mainly from committee which give weekly reports to the SGA.

• Student Government Association (new DSD)

- Student Activities Committee / Second Year Experience (Chairperson: Kim Sternberg)

- Residential Life Committee (Co-Chairpersons: Kyu Seok Kim,Kyu Rae Kim)

- Committee on Institutional Advancement (Co-Chairperson: Joon Woo Park,E Jun Chang)

- Events Committee (Chairperson: Cody Chlanda)

- Dance Committee (Chairpersons: Monica Cossich)

Executives and Committee Chairperson Confusion

At one point, there were committees in SGA that were required to be chaired by certain executive members. However, this consolidates extreme amounts of SGA influence in the hands of very few, and limits the amount of involvement by non-executive individuals. It can also lead to conflicts of interest on the Executive Board and possible corruption, as the Vice President appoints all committee chairs.

Because of this, the current SGA policy is to exclude Executives from being committee chairs, although it is not Constitutionally forbidden. The reason it is not forbidden is for cases similar to the one in the Spring of 2009, where the only active first-year members of some committees were incoming-executives (Even in this case, one of the committees chaired by executives was transitioned to non-executives in January of 2010). Excluding this special case, it is highly recommend that Executive members refrain from committee chairmanship.

Major Accomplishments

Since its creation, SGA has contributed much to the Missouri Academy Community. Below are the major examples of such contributions. Much of what SGA does, however, are year-to-year activities, such as prom, maintaining the building through the Residential Life Committee, etc. For this reason, attempting to enumerate every achievement of SGA would be an impossible task. The achievements listed below are non-typical, and serve as instances where SGA as an organization took it upon itself to go above and beyond the typical and expected activities:

2007-2008

• Removing the GPA requirement for seniors having Extended Curfew privileges
• Altering the cell-phone policy to allow students to keep their cell-phones overnight. Previously, all cell phone were collected by RCs after on-floor curfew.

2008-2009

• Creating the ELMS program for May Session. Previously, all students were required to do mandatory community service during May. Recommended revision to May Session was not new, and it could be argued that this was somehow connected to the sentiments of students of earlier years who drafted The Great May Classes Petition of 2004. The ELMS program, however, proved to be generally successful in the May Session of 2009.
• Hosting the first SGA-sponsored college fair. College fairs had been hosted by the Academy before, but due to the location of the city of Maryville, lack of surrounding schools, and rival fair by Maryville High, the idea was abandoned by the Admin in the early 2000's. This event marked the renewal of the yearly event, this time run by students. A method of overcoming the challenges facing hosting a Maryville college fair would not be discovered until the next year, however, and the fall 2009 fair had only 15 schools and only Missouri Academy students attended.
• Pushing for the creation of a Graduate Assistant position to oversee the Alumni Association and Parents Association. Jessica Platt was hired in the fall of 2009 for this purpose.

2009-2010

• Hosting the second-SGA sponsored college fair (see above). Initially, the Admin was strongly opposed to this idea for several reasons. For one, the Admin did not want to get on the bad side of Maryville High. In addition, there was fear that a poor college fair would reflect poorly on the Academy as an institution. The student idea for solving this was to simply take the fair of Maryville High (organized by the Missouri Association of College Admission Counseling, or MOACAC), and host it at Northwest. This was negotiated with the counselor of Maryville High, and when the Admin discovered that Maryville High was more than willing to give up the fair (something the counselors there saw as a burden), they jumped on board with the idea. In the fall of 2009, the fair had 43 colleges present, with 470 high school students in attendance. This was a tremendous increase from the previous year, and solidified the fair as (for now) a repeatable event. Benefits from this were not only for the students attending the fair, but also for the Academy. The fair provided an opportunity for colleges and high school students to learn more about the Academy, and spread the word of about us. In short, it was a major success for SGA.
• Hard Mic Cafe

Contact Information

You can contact the SGA by either talking to a member of SGA, emailing them as individuals, or going to the SGA facebook page (StuGov, run by the First Year Executive).