MSA attempts to reach out to students

The tables look to increase student involvement in MSA.

By Megan Pearl

Published Feb. 19, 2010

The Missouri Students Association hosted two public tables this week, which aimed to increase student involvement in student government, and saw little in the way of results.

"I have noticed a theme of people being apathetic," MSA Sen. Tyler Ricketts said. "I've asked a lot of friends and I have talked to a lot of people, and most can't think of anything they would like to see improved."

Ricketts said he developed the idea of a table at the end of last semester. He and fellow MSA Sen. Sean Nahlik, a former Maneater columnist, wanted to start the table to gain more interest from students because student government cannot work for the students if it does not know what students want.

The table was set up in Stotler Lounge of Memorial Union and offered free cookies and hot chocolate to interested students.

"We heard students who were for the live tiger, some were opposed and some students wanted a certain artist to come to Mizzou," Ricketts said. "Though we didn't have a lot of students stop by, we got some good suggestions and hopefully we will get a better turn out the more we do it."

Ricketts and Nahlik partnered with MSA interns for advertising, using both flyers in the residence halls and Facebook to get the word out.

Ideally, they would like to ramp up the advertising, Nahlik said.

Ricketts said he would like to increase the amount of flyers and word-of-mouth advertising.

"We'd hopefully like to make it more accessible so people know what we're doing," Ricketts said. "If people had known exactly what we were doing more might have stopped in."

This table, led by Nahlik and Ricketts, took place Tuesday and was for general communication between MSA and the student body. The other table took place Wednesday and was to recruit new MSA senators for the upcoming election.

"I thought that tabling would be a good idea, free stuff usually attracts people," MSA Sen. Sami Ware said.

The table offered Starbursts, cookies, free MSA souvenirs and information about becoming a member of the student government through Senate.

"I honestly did not think the utility would be that great," Senate Speaker Amanda Shelton said. "We did this two weeks ago too, and we didn't get the results that we would have expected from a Maneater ad or the Rec Center."

Shelton said MSA is looking to elect 50 senators in March and then trying to place the new senators on committees before summer. There are 20 open seats reserved for the next fall for freshmen or anyone who didn't get elected in the spring.

"I didn't think this was going to get a lot of people, but I thought we should at least try," Shelton said. "Last year the only thing we did was put up a banner."

Although the first round of tabling was not especially successful, the MSA senators remain optimistic about other students becoming more involved.

"This was only the first tabling event that we've done and we are planning on this being a monthly or at least recurring event," Ricketts said.