SGA pres. not fulfilling duties, members say

Jesse Johnson, Editor-in-Chief

Some members of the Student Government Association are complaining that the SGA president is not doing his job.

With the promise of anonymity, several high-ranking members of the SGA told Campus Current that SGA President Nick Nadeau does not hold weekly executive board meetings, which are required by the SGA Constitution. In addition, the officials said, he does not keep regular office hours or regularly attend Board of Trustees meetings, which are requirements of the job.

“Not much gets done in SGA but the passing of contracts and [student club] budget reports,” one SGA member said. The student added, “Most members of the SGA are not even familiar with what the SGA is supposed to do. It is the responsibility of our SGA president to guide them.”

But “Nick’s not the only one with drama in the SGA,” another student member said.

And one faculty adviser who has dealt with Nadeau and the SGA said if the organization is having problems, they have never spilled over into its business dealings. “Our dealings with Nick [and the SGA] have been positive,” said Richard Hardesty, a faculty adviser with the History Club.

The SGA is in charge of allocating student fees to student clubs on campus.

Nadeau, who was elected SGA president last spring, said he plans to run for a second term.

Still, one student official compared Nadeau’s leadership of the SGA to a “dictatorship,” and another reported that he heard Nadeau threaten to punch a student official.

Several members said Nadeau’s behavior was similar when he was the group’s secretary during the 2015-16 school year.

Some of those members unsuccessfully tried to have him removed from his position, they said.

Nadeau denied all of the accusations.

“Everybody just sees what I do day-to-day, but nobody really sees all the behind-the-scenes stuff,” he said. He pointed to his involvement with the Gay-Straight Alliance’s Drag- a-Palooza event.

“It’s hard for one person to do everything by themselves if they don’t have the help they need to do certain things,” he said.

He added: “I do this for the students. It’s not just, ‘Oh, it looks good on a resume for me.’ … The reason why I ran was to help students and to make the college a better place for everybody and to make everybody feel included.”

But the SGA members told Campus Current Nadeau is not representing students and did not fulfill his campaign promise to bring events to AACC’s satellite campuses.

One of the student leaders defended Nadeau, however, saying one year is too short a time to accomplish his many goals.

Still, another said, “All of the SGA positions exist for the benefit of the students. They deserve to be informed of anything going on in the SGA, good or bad.”