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Editorial 2: Student Body President’s Failure

(Logo. Source: Student Government Association at UT-Tyler.)

 

Student Body President Chloe Dix has not responded to any comment request Patriot Weekly has sent throughout the semester, including those in regard to Swoop-N-Go’s prices. A Texas Public Information Act Request returned this week no record of any email communication from Ms. Dix’s UT-Tyler email account about Sodexo nor about Sodexo’s convenience store prices to either UT-Tyler President Kirk Calhoun, Chief Business Officer Dwain Morris or Sodexo Manager Jamie Dowdy since she took office in May 2023. Without comment from Ms. Dix and with student complaints about the convenience store prices enduring since fall 2023, this leaves one to assume that Ms. Dix has not communicated student concerns to university leadership about the financial burden some students face with Sodexo’s convenience store prices since she took office.

Moreover, students have also groaned about the enduring problem of university parking. This is a problem that precedes Ms. Dix’s presidency, but not her previous term as student government secretary in the 2022-2023 academic year when she would have been aware. Yet, despite students’ ongoing frustration with scarce parking, even now into spring 2024, it appears Ms. Dix has achieved no improvements to the parking scenario. While she did tout that university administrators were working "extremely hard" on rescheduling classes to alleviate parking demand, this solution’s promise, if it happens at all, is for the coming 2024-2025 academic year, not in her constituents’ current year. In this light, it appears Ms. Dix has achieved no improvements for her constituents with regard to scarce parking.

However, despite these shortcomings, Ms. Dix has been able to make some achievements during her tenure as student body president. Despite the lack of quality of life improvements for her constituents, Ms. Dix did manage to win election to The University Student Advisory Council’s secretary position for the 2024-2025 academic year. So now, after her time as UT-Tyler student body president, she will now have a place to serve on the UT System level.

Moreover, Ms. Dix also managed to successfully apply for the student regent position in UT System where, if appointed, she would serve alongside UT System Board of Regents in a prestigious and responsible position as a non-voting member of UT System’s governing board.

Finally, while Ms. Dix did not appear to find articulation of the pressing student concerns mentioned above, she did manage to find a voice to advocate that student government increase the students’ mandatory athletics fee and for student government’s adoption of this proposal to a student-wide ballot for March 20. Ms. Dix’s advocacy during the government’s deliberation helped successfully bring the financial burden of a fee increase one step closer to reality for her constituents.

While Ms. Dix has not been outright destructive in her agenda as president, her absence of advocacy for her constituents is her failure as student body president. Throughout her tenure as the student body’s representative to university administration, Ms. Dix has apparently failed to give voice to some of her student constituents’ most pressing concerns. Meanwhile, throughout her tenure she succeeded in moving herself closer and closer to positions of power.

Ms. Dix may be an effective administrator of student affairs in her own government, but she fails to be the most important role of all: a champion for students and of their concerns to university administration.

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