The Student Government Association will be distributing a survey to randomly selected students within the next week to vote on several issues that are pressing to campus.

“This will include questions about a revised grading scale, the emphasis of programming in the GUC, the allocation of the student activity fee and interest in the possibility of a new football stadium,” said SGA President Chase Holcombe. “The purpose of the survey is to get an accurate idea of how campus feels about a variety of issues.”

Holcombe said the purpose of randomizing the students is to make sure the campus is getting an accurate cross-section of the campus because campus wide surveys can suffer from participation bias.

Participation bias occurs when individuals involved in an experiment act or respond in ways they believe correspond with what the researchers are looking for, according to Alleydog.

“So if we sent the survey out to the entirety of campus, we could probably get more respondents, but we would suffer from participation bias,” Holcombe said. “It is incredibly important for students to participate. We want this survey to have a high level of integrity, so we will toss the sample and start over if we cannot get at least an 80 percent response rate. I know that is an ambitious goal, but we are very hopeful.”

Freshmen Kayla Walton expressed her concern for the GPA revision. She said that the revision would make it harder for high academic achievers to achieve their goals.

“In order for our voices to be heard, we have to speak,” Walton said. “If a student has an opinion on any decisions being made at UNA, they should express that opinion and be aware of the changes that are taking place. The GPA revision will not only affect current students. This revision will affect future students. It is important to vote and be involved in major decisions that will impact future students and present ones.”

One of the topics being voted on is the allocation of the student activity fee. Executive Director of the School of the Arts Terrance Brown proposed 15 percent of the university’s student activity fee is designated to SOTA to aid in supporting Student Engagement’s mission of developing influential citizens and just leaders.

“One of the School of the Arts’ initiatives is to increase cultural awareness among the student population,” Brown said. “To foster this plan, SOTA would like to offer all art exhibitions, performances and presentations to UNA students at no charge, excluding Shoals Symphony at UNA, with valid student identification.”

Brown said that, in doing this, there will be an uptake in student appreciation of cultural values in addition to enhanced creativity that can be beneficial in both arts and non-arts educational studies.

“The democratic process is alive and well on our campus,” Brown said. “Students pay a student activity fee so these funds may be used to enhance their communal life at the university. It is vital for students to provide input in opportunities such as these so the senators who represent the campus community can reflect these thoughts in their decision-making.”