As the roads around Austin began to ice over with snow on its way, a Student Government Association meeting heated up into a debate about its inability to reach students.

The senate meeting Thursday night was supposed to go over several new initiatives and bills up for first reading. But the meeting slowly became less about legislation and more about student outreach – whether there is a disconnect between SGA and its constituents, represented partially by the low turnout among students during the last SGA election in the fall, when Blanca Garcia’s resignation from the presidency left a vacancy.

One student present at the meeting said there is a disconnect that SGA needs to address.

“If only 200 people voted in the last election, out of a school of 5,000 people, then something’s wrong,” sophomore Lesli Simms told the senators and the handful of other students at the Feb. 3 meeting. “The student body isn’t responding to what you’re doing.”

The debate about student outreach that inspired Simms to stand up and speak resulted from a bill that Celso Baez, chair of the Intergovernmental Affairs committee and senator of the senior class, wrote and introduced at the senate meeting.

The bill aims to change the SGA Constitution so that anyone who has attended St. Edward’s University for two consecutive semesters can run for the office of SGA president. Currently, only students who have had four semesters in SGA can run, limiting the number of eligible candidates to four.

The details of the bill sparked a debate that lasted almost an hour because some senators supported the bill, others were against it and the remaining ones would consider it if the qualifications were tweaked to be less inclusive.

SGA President Krista Heiden, a co-sponsor of the bill, said any interested student should be able to run for SGA president.

“I would not want to limit anyone who has other interests who could represent the students,” Heiden said. “If you are in the association and meet qualifications, then you can run from office, but you should not limit anyone else from running. The students will vote on who they think will do the best job. They know what’s right for the community.”

Heiden said that she is president now only because the former president, Blanca Garcia, resigned in the middle of last semester, promoting Heiden to the presidency. Without the vacancy, Heiden would not have been eligible for the presidency, as she had taken a break from SGA during the first semester of her junior year. Heiden’s qualifications were questioned by Leigh Anne Winger, who dropped her objections and later joined SGA as a sophomore senator.

Other senators, however, were not as ready to accept the bill. Melina Tabibian, a senator for East Hall, voiced her concern that allowing any student with two semesters at St. Edward’s to become president means SGA has the potential to be headed by an inexperienced student interested only in receiving the scholarship that comes with being SGA president.

“We can’t teach a president how to do a senator’s job,” Tabibian said.

Midway through the debate, Simms stood up to give her opinion. In support of the bill, she said that allowing anyone to run for president will make the student body more invested in SGA. She added that because the senators spend their time in a metaphorical “ivory tower,” passing legislation that students don’t know about, they have no idea what their constituents want.

“I see the passion that SGA has for the legislation process, but I don’t think they carry that passion when it comes to student involvement because either they see the student body as apathetic, invisible or ineffective,” Simms said in a later interview. “What I mean is, I don’t think the students see the importance of what SGA does because I don’t think SGA properly demonstrates their importance.”

Her speech marked a turning point in the debate, the senators finally agreeing that before they could come to a consensus about the bill, they needed to discuss it further in committee.