Syracuse University Student Association President Colin Seale said he “wasn’t pleased” about the low turnout at SA’s open forum Wednesday night. About 10 of SU’s 12,000-plus students attended the event to discuss SA’s progress this semester.

Seale said the meeting was tentatively scheduled to take place before Spring Break, but was pushed back this week because of scheduling conflicts. As a result SA was unable to advertise the event as much as it had hoped.

“With people just getting back from Spring Break, they weren’t thinking ‘I really want to go to the open forum,’ ” Seale said.

Despite the low turnout, Seale said the meeting made him aware of some student problems that he did not know about.

”I wasn’t aware of the extent to which students felt that SA wasn’t adequately responding to their needs,” he said.

Assemblyman Anthony Buissereth asked Seale and the Assembly why students do not take a greater interest in SA.

“There’s only 32 assembly seats out of 50 filled,” he said. “Are students apathetic and don’t want to join, or is the SA pathetic and no one wants to join?”

Seale said students probably will not participate in SA unless they think the organization is working for them.

“The students don’t really feel SA defends them and that makes them not care about SA,” Seale said, admitting that he initially “didn’t even want to join SA” because he “thought there were many elements that made it lame.”

Part of the solution, he said, is to reach out to students who don’t know about SA. One way the group plans to do this is by visiting campus dining halls to meet students and learn more about what they want.

“Sometimes students blame low participation when they don’t know what else to blame,” Seale said. “They need people reaching out to them and it’s something we need to do more of.”

Shaqualyn Mitchell, a junior management major, said she thinks SA has low participation because students think the job is more demanding than it really is.

“Most people think you need to have an intense political background,” she said. “I think if they knew how easy it is they’d probably come.”

Mitchell also said students are frustrated with SA because it has been complaining about the same problems during the past several years, but seems to refuse to do anything about them until pressured by students.

“You look for 1,000 people to say something before you do something about a problem,” Mitchell said. “Not everyone has time for that and that’s why we have you to represent us.”

“A lot of times it takes only one person to make a difference but we just never hear from the right people,” Seale responded.

But Jessica Cordova, a freshman member of the Assembly, said she feels uncomfortable telling students SA is really representing them after it voted Monday night against holding a referendum. It would have given students the opportunity to vote on whether the New York Public Interest Research Group should be allowed to ask students to increase the group’s student fee.

“They said ‘SA is supposed to represent us and they’re representing themselves and not letting us be heard,’ ” Cordova said. “They think when SA has the opportunity to put it to the student body they should, and I’m having a hard time telling people on my floor that we did that.”

Buissereth questioned SA’s motives behind voting against the referendum.

“There seems to be a general sense in the Student Association that no group should get a big chunk out of the fees, but there are organizations that are able to take a chunk and students don’t even directly vote on that,” he said.

Published on March 20, 2002 at 12:00 pm