After only one member showed up for the Mayor's Commission for Ball State Student Relations meeting Friday, student officials are planning to discuss new guidelines this week for next year's membership.
Muncie Mayor Dan Canan appointed 10 students - two from each grade level and two graduate students - to serve as a line of communication between Ball State University and Muncie last spring, and they began work in September 2005. However, never once has the entire board been present at the biweekly meetings, said Adam Link, secretary of community relations for the Student Government Association.
About five to six students showed up to each meeting last semester, he said. The 4 p.m. Friday meeting times were initially set because students on the commission chose that as the best time, Link said.
Most of the members who were not present on Friday sent e-mails to Link saying they would not be able to make the time this semester, Link said. SGA President Steve Geraci was out of town in Michigan on Friday but said he made every effort to attend the commission meetings. Geraci, while not a member of the group, is in charge of facilitating the meetings.
"That just appears to be a poor time because it is the end of the week," Link said, "and people tend to not want to stay late on Friday on this campus, so it just didn't seem like it was working out."
Link set a new meeting time for the semester, which will be Wednesday at 7 p.m. The next meeting will take place March 1.
"What we are going to have to do now is really restructure it so it is effective in the future because it is really important to students, the university and the community to have this dialogue," Link said.
In discussing the commission's future with junior member Gennie Nguyen and Canan Friday, Link said student officials will work to change the rules for board members, establishing a set meeting time similar to those set for members of Student Senate on Wednesdays. The purpose is to start "a solid application process for this again, so this is the date and time, this is the stuff we will be dealing with (and) this will be your responsibility," Link said.
By setting firmer guidelines, students can manipulate their schedules on a semester basis and serve their two-year terms more consistently, Link said.
"I don't know where else we are going to take it right now with more guidelines," Link said. "That's something I want to talk a little more with Steve and the mayor this week to flush it out."
The Mayor's Commission replaced the Muncie Coalition, which was in place for three years before Canan scrapped it because it was not working. While the Mayor's Commission has accomplished its goal for an east-of-campus Muncie Indiana Transit System loop shuttle and is working toward other goals, Canan said he had hoped more students would participate in the meetings and share ideas for setting future agendas.
"I'm just a little disappointed that not more have shown up because the intent was to get people from different grades and see what's on their minds," Canan said. "My agenda was to be your agenda."
Geraci said his goal is to maximize the number of students who show up at the meetings, but the commission does not have any set guidelines yet.
"We're just trying to find some clear direction and infrastructure so they will be more effective in the future," Geraci said. "We learned a lot over the first year, so we will apply what we learned to make the commission more useful."
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