Hatin’ SGA

You probably saw this email that SGA sent out to students this evening about student applications for the graduation speaker and Athletic Association Board of Directors:

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:45:43 -0400
Sender: All Students archnewsstudents@listserv.uga.edu
From: Official UGA Announcements archnews@uga.edu
Subject: Student nominations for Athletic Board and Commencement speaker
To: ARCHNEWSSTUDENTS@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU archnews@uga.edu archnewsstudents@listserv.uga.edu

TO: UGA Students

FROM: Student Government Association

SUBJECT: Nominations for Athletic Board and Commencement speaker

The UGA Athletic Association Board of Directors (which is chaired by President Michael F. Adams and receives reports from Athletic Director Damon Evans) is asking for a student to sit as a board member for the 2008-2009 academic year. If you are interested in applying for this position, please visit the Student Government Association website at www.uga.edu/sga for guidelines and more information.

GRADUATING SENIORS: Applications to be the Spring 2008 Commencement speaker are now available. Please visit the Student Government Association website at www.uga.edu/sga for a copy of the application.

Best,
Connor McCarthy and Nicki Batelli

President and Vice President
Student Government Association

Note this email was sent today, Thursday, March 20th at 9:45 pm.

Now, read this email that new SGA President Connor McCarthy sent out over the a private email list (the Foundation Fellowship only email list):

From: “REDACTED” redacted@uga.edu
To: fellowsonly@REDACTED.com
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:23:38 -0400
Subject: [fellowsonly] Commencement Speaker and Athletic Association Board of Directors Applications redacted@uga.edu

From Connor McCarthy.

—–

Hey guys,

Soon you will hopefully be receiving something about the Commencement speaker and the student representative to the Athletic Association Board of Directors. I wanted to give you a head start and an actual copy of the application so you don’t have to visit the Student Government Association webpage (which I’m certain you do on a regular basis).

Attached are the applications and below is a small blurb that I expect to go over the Arch listserv soon.

The UGA Athletic Association Board of Directors (which is chaired by President Michael Adams and receives reports from Athletic Director Damon Evans) is asking for a student to sit as a Board member for the 2008-2009 academic year. If you are interested in applying for this position, please visit the Student Government Association website at www.uga.edu/sga for guidelines and more information.

GRADUATING SENIORS: Applications to be the Spring 2008 Commencement speaker are now available. Please visit the Student Government Association website at www.uga.edu/sga for a copy of the application.

Holla back,
Connor

This email was sent yesterday, Wednesday, March 19th at 4:23pm. The Foundation Fellowship is UGA’s top scholarship program. It is rather exclusive, and McCarthy recently was awarded mid-term Foundation Fellowship.

Seriously? “Soon you will hopefully be receiving something about the Commencement speaker and the student representative to the Athletic Association Board of Directors. I wanted to give you a head start and an actual copy of the application so you don’t have to visit the Student Government Association webpage (which I’m certain you do on a regular basis).”

Come on. McCarthy is going to do something nice for his scholarship friends and give them a heads up before the rest of the student body gets this. Hello, ethics? He gave the Foundation Fellows an UNFAIR heads up and an UNFAIR head start with these applications for positions that represent the student body (all members of the student body, Connor).

McCarthy went out of his way to do this. He had to contact someone with access to the Fellows Only email list to get that person to post this on the list. He meant to give Foundation Fellows early access. He admitted it in the email and he went out of his way to make sure they got the applications in an easy manner.

Mr. President, this is not the way to start off your new administration. Do ALL students a favor and don’t play favorites among any group of students. There are real problems with this action and it is sad to see the ethical problems with SGA shine through so early in your administration.

Connor attached both applications, the commencement speaker application and the Athletic Assocation Board of Directors, which I am including here as pdfs for ALL students (McCarthy didn’t attach these to the email to the student body) to download without having to visit the SGA website.