Only members of the Student Government Association attended the senate meetings during the fall semester, even though they are open to all students – until sophomore Lesli Simms stepped up to the microphone during one of the last meetings of the year.

Simms told SGA senators that she and other students aren’t being offered enough classes in their majors each semester to complete the requirements to graduate in four years.

“I feel invisible because I’m not an English Writing and Rhetoric or Comm major,” Simms said. “I’m an English Literature major, and there are barely any lit classes for me to choose from each time I register for classes.”

SGA had been trying to reach out to students. Several SGA members, including the new vice president Noah Corn, promised to look into the matter.

“It’s students like you who make us proud of what we do,” Corn said. He added that he was grateful a student had shown up to a meeting.

The senators followed through with their promise. Simms spoke at the Nov. 18 senate meeting, well before winter break. Three senators remembered her plea for help two months later and drafted a legislative resolution in response. One of several that went up for first reading at the Feb. 3 senate meeting, the resolution will create an audit for student course selection.

The audit will be a commitee of students who will review the course schedule before it’s posted on EdWeb each semester. Details of the audit, such as how many students will be part of the audit and how these students will be selected, have not been worked out yet. Another detail that needs to be worked out is who will oversee the audit if it’s implemented – SGA will not be in charge.

The author of the resolution, sophomore senator Leigh Anne Winger, said that the audit would be based on student input. With it, students can suggest what they do or don’t want from their major. They can’t opt not to take a class or to place a class from another major into their own, but the audit will allow them to have a voice about their education, showing the administration and others where possible problems in course selection exist.

So if Simms feels that she will not graduate on time because literature majors have so few classes to choose from each semester, she can express this concern through the audit.

If the audit produces a clear need for another class, SGA does not have the authority to create it. But the Academic Council, a group comprised mostly of faculty members and three student representatives from SGA, does because its main function is to approve changes to the university curriculum.

Mary Rist, an English Writing professor and a member of the Academic Council, thinks that Simms’ concern is valid. Rist said she is interested in seeing the results of the audit, but she doesn’t think the audit will reveal a major issue.

“In most cases, I think you will find we’ve done a good job filling each major with the appropriate number of classes,” Rist said. “Some majors don’t have a lot of classes because there aren’t a lot of students to take them. Then again, we don’t want to put the cart before the horse. If there are not a lot of classes available, students might shy away from the major.”

After Winger introduced the initiative to the senate, the senators voted to take it back to committee – meaning that, after further research that will work out the details of the audit, the initiative may return to the senate for a final vote and become law.