This semester, Senate members said their goal is to directly represent UNA’s student body and understand what students want.

Senate, a branch of the Student Government Association (SGA), met Aug. 29 to discuss ways they could get a better representation of the student body. SGA continued to accept applications for Senator positions until last week, in an attempt to have a better and more diverse student representation.

“Tell all of your friends to apply, so we can have a real voice of the students,” said SGA President Laura Giles. “I want SGA to be more of one unit, instead of just all of the different branches.”

SGA’s goal is to represent every part of campus and to attend all campus-wide events, Giles said.

On UNA’s website, students will have the opportunity to get to know all of Senate’s members better and contact them. The SGA website will provide a headshot of each member and a short biography written by the members.

In order to better understand what students want and to represent the student body, Senate members will be providing students with the opportunity to participate in surveys based on upcoming student events and current issues, Giles said.

“We want to use text messaging polls for students to participate in, because they are very short and simple,” she said.

If approved, students will be able to participate in SGA surveys by texting their response to a number provided. The poll questions will be broadcasted on campus, giving students the option to participate.

“We would like to launch these text-messaging polls by conducting one on campus safety,” Giles said. “We want to know if students feel safe or if they do not feel safe.”

Select text messaging polls are cheaper than doing paper surveys and are also shorter and more efficient, Giles said.

SGA members said they are also planning to create and distribute newsletters each month, giving students more information about the events being planned. They said they plan to utilize resources on campus to provide students with general SGA information.

Senate members also spent a portion of their meeting discussing their 2013-2014 budget draft.

SGA also discussed the option of raising the previous Freshman Forum budget from $2,000 to $2,500 and will vote on the proposed increase at their meeting on Sept. 5.