Two ideas suggested on the subreddit are hanging lights around the plinth and adding more printing locations. Photo by Anna Phengsakmueang | Photo Editor
New initiative aims to increase student input in decision-making process
UTD’s Student Government is using a new approach to get
ideas from students, now offering Reddit Gold to those who post feasible ideas
to the school’s subreddit. The posters get the gold and their idea receives
consideration as an SG project.
SG first joined the subreddit over a year ago, but their new
initiative is a more permanent attempt to increase the organization’s online presence.
Incoming chair of the Technology Committee and biology senior Alexander Quach
said the idea for online suggestions came about when existing methods, such as
meet-and-greets and suggestion boxes weren’t working well enough.
“We initially thought it would be a great idea to connect
with students that way because we know that our Reddit for UTD had a lot of
traffic compared to a lot of our universities, so we thought it would be a
really good way to get feedback,” Quach said.
As leadership of the Technology Committee changes hands,
online accessibility is being taken on by Quach. He said having an online
platform for discussion was necessary to make sure all students’ ideas would be
represented.
“A lot of times, you’ll hear the same suggestions over and
over again. You’ll hear a lot of things about parking, you’ll hear a lot of
things about food, but sometimes people who might not have the chance to say it
will be more willing to share that on the internet,” Quach said. “We weren’t
looking for anything specifically, but we were just looking to include
everybody because that gives everyone a more fair chance.”
As a part of an SG funded project, the Reddit post is kept
clean and on-topic by SG moderators. Outgoing Technology Committee chair and
molecular biology senior Yilong Peng said that for the most part, there was
very little that needed to be dealt with.
“We’ve had a lot of people suggest project ideas. We’ve also
seen a lot of discussion within the separate project ideas as well, which is
something that, while we were not expecting, was very nice to see,” Peng said.
“We have a full tabulated list of all the ideas that were brought up, all the
questions, as well as how many upvotes, which are points that indicate roughly
to us how popular they were with other people, and so that’s kind of creates a
natural priority list and pecking order for this on how or what order you might
want to address those ideas.”
When deciding which responses get Reddit Gold, members of
the Technology Committee and its officers will consider both their upvotes and
viability. SG President and political science senior Ayoub Mohammed said that
many simple projects have various unforeseen obstacles.
“Give us an idea that can be fixed in a physical manner,
right? A timely manner as well. Just don’t say something like lower tuition,
for example,” Mohammed said. “There’s a lot of factors that go into every
single one of these ideas. I mean something as simple as putting up the
homecoming lights year-round, there’s a lot of costs. Some ideas we have seen
on there, like more printing locations, maybe that’s something more feasible.”
The newly implemented CVS vending machines on campus were
suggested on a similar Reddit post made last spring. Mohammed said having the
post was important to receiving the perspective of the rest of the student
body.
“There may be around 70 of us, but that doesn’t mean we see
every single part of campus, or we’re going to see every single point,” he
said. “There might be students out there who have ideas that we’ve never
thought of, some 30,000 students. Everyone has different ideas, different
opinions.”
Vice President and public affairs senior Hope Cory said the
idea for the Reddit post came from wanting to be able to benefit other
students. By increasing its transparency and visibility, she said it made SG
able to access student needs.
“Not only does it give Student Government visibility by
being on Reddit but it also gives us transparency, showing the students that we
really do care about what they want to be done on campus as far as
accessibility goes,” Cory said.
Despite not having officially chosen responses, Cory said
there were certain responses she had taken note of. She said responses
discussing creating more print stations stood out to her, mainly due to already
having been working to create them.
“I think there are a lot of projects that maybe we have in
the back of our minds like, ‘This is something that we should probably get
done,’ and then students come forward and they’re like, ‘We want this right
now.’ That’s something we need to move forward,” Cory said. “…some of them are things that we’ve been
trying to get established and maybe didn’t have enough student feedback.”