The Student Government Association has agreed to purchase four high-definition TVs for the area outside Einstein Bros. in the Morgan University Center after an extended discussion on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at the weekly SGA meeting.
Prior to the discussion and vote, several students attended the meeting to give their opinions on the purchase.
“There are 12 TVs inside the food court,” said APSU student Brandon Phillips. “Our idea is that since they are on a feed loop, they play the same things over and over again.”
Phillips encouraged SGA to seek other options, including speaking with Chartwells to change the messages shown on the TVs in the Grill.
“You can contact whomever to change the loop,” Phillips said. “You can insert the campus announcements, advertisements and other things like that into there because I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen the same videos like 12,000 times.”
SGA President Will Roberts explained the issue is the televisions in the food court are run and separately contracted by Chartwells, who has full control over the televisions and what is played on them.
“The ones that were talked about last week will be completely controlled by the University Facilities Office,” Roberts said. “All the content that we put on there will be submitted by student organizations.”
After discussing the overall cost, Sen. Dylan Kellogg said it would be closer to $700 rather than $9,000. He said it was “absurd” and suggested SGA ask for a lower price. Kellogg added they could also improve advertising by using their own television systems.
Sen. Glenna Beaty reassured the concerned students that SGA does not spend money frivolously, and asked them to look at the long term effects of this addition.
“We don’t just go out and spend money all the time on random stuff,” said Beaty. “I think this is going to better the university. Maybe we cannot see all of what it’s going to do right now, but in the future I think that it will actually be used for more than just announcements and things like that.”
Resolution No. 10, proposed by Sen. Frank Burns, was also passed during the meeting. The resolution gives students the opportunity to donate meals to the needy.
After some questions about the implementation of Burns’ plans, he went into further detail about how the meal vouchers would work.
“The meal vouchers will be sent [to the Student Organization Council office] and for students who don’t have meal plans they can go and get a hot meal,” said Burns. “And it will be a one time voucher. It won’t be like you can reuse it every time. It is for students who do not have meal plans at all.”
Due to time running out, the discussion and votes on Resolution No. 11, Act No. 5 and Act No. 6 have been tabled until the next meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 4.
