Every Thursday afternoon a small group of students meets to discuss legislation, plan for campus events and try to create change on UNA’s campus.

These students constitute the legislative branch of SGA, known as the Senate. The group is divided into five committees: Budget Oversight, Legislative Affairs, Rules and Regulations, Student Welfare, and Elections and Recruitment.

Each committee oversees a different aspect of Senate, working toward different goals that the group sets at the start of each year.

SGA President Will Riley said Senate  gets things done through two processes.

“The first (process) is internal, which covers things like amendments or changes to the code of laws,” Riley said. “The second process, for university policy changes, is a little more complicated. If there’s something in the university policy we want to change, we have to submit it to the Shared Governance Committee.”

Riley said there are three senates — faculty, staff and SGA — and any university policy changes must pass in all three before going back to Shared Governance.

“Once every senate group has the yea or nay, the Shared Governance committee will then take it to the higher powers or constituent groups,” Riley said. “The entire process takes at least a month, if not longer.”

Passing university policy changes takes at least a month because not all senates meet weekly, Riley said.

One of the resolutions Senate worked to pass last fall was a university policy change for Thanksgiving break. The resolution would increase the break from three to five days and eliminate fall break, Riley said.

“It was kind of like we sat down and played chess with the academic calendar,” he said. “We couldn’t just take away days, so we had to see what we could work with.”

The resolution passed in two senates but failed in the third, so it did not make it back to Shared Governance, Riley said.

“Most students don’t realize that a lot of the things we work on are things that we’re planning for at least a year ahead,” he said. “We have the goals, the tangible things for students to see that we do, but then there are many other things that SGA does that seem abstract.”

SGA Treasurer Laura Giles created and oversees the budgets for both the University Program Council (UPC) and Senate. She said the financial side of achieving goals is a little bit easier.

“No matter what we’re doing or pulling money for, it comes from the same budget,” Giles said.

While the business office prefers that requests be made at least two weeks in advance, Giles said she typically requires three weeks’ notice for requesting money.

“The process is fairly quick,” she said. “A request can go through in just a few days. (The business office) handles it after I fill out the request form. We’ve never had a request for funds denied.”