Tips for student government organizations

Create a statement of values that can help guide your thinking and actions. Engage a broad range of voices from the student body to help shape this statement.

Initiate active efforts to ensure that the student government is diverse and representative of the student body. Encourage students from a wide range of communities to run for office and to apply for opportunities and address potential barriers to entry.

As student government leaders, you have more direct lines of communication to administrators than most students and the opportunity to make clear and concrete requests of them. Use your position to advocate for agreed upon values and to represent the concerns of the student body at large.

Ensure that you adequately fund student groups on a content-neutral and non-discriminatory basis. If you hear complaints that the funding process is unfair, take them seriously and address them directly.

Recognize and support student groups’ right to protest and assembly.

Just as administrators have an obligation to respond to incidents that rock the campus community, so do student government officials. As student leaders, you have a responsibility to uphold the precepts of open inquiry that underpin the university environment
while demonstrating support to affected communities in the wake of speech-related controversies.