McCorkle urges for action

On Wednesday, in front of the Smith-Brown Memorial Union, the Southern University Student Government Association held their first in a series of grievance forums, allowing students to voice concerns and giving possible solutions.
SGA President Justin McCorkle, frustrated with hearing complaints from students who were not proactive in finding solutions, called the session, “Speak Up or Shut Up.”
“We’re doing this to give students an opportunity to address SGA directly about what issues they have on this campus,” McCorkle said. “We’re doing it outside so that the ears of the administration and faculty can be opened to the voices of the students.”
McCorkle said the inspiration for the forum came from the activist nature of former SGA President Lavell Crump, better known as rapper David Banner.
“Lavell Crump did things like this during his administration and it’s what we need to do now,” McCorkle said.
Initially, the crowd seemed uninterested. But after McCorkle urged the crowd to either, “Speak up or shut the hell up,” more students orated their many complaints and few praises.
“I feel like the student body as a general population is apathetic,” McCorkle said. “But things like this will cure that apathy.”
Ashley Mose, a senior electrical engineering major from Lawrenceville, Ga., spoke up and said her main problem was the attitudes of some university’s staff.
“My problem with Southern are people with nasty attitudes that work in financial aid, housing and in the registration office,” Mose said. “Our tuition pays their salary, and you go to them and they have a nasty-attitude with you like you’re the reason you got the problem, but they ain’t doing their jobs.”
McCorkle said people do not realize that students pay the salaries of university staff and without their funding the university would be unable to function.
“We are the top shareholders of this entire university,” he said. “Without our funds, the government funding — the little governmental funding that they give this little bitty HBCU — would not be able to run.”
He said if every student went on strike for the spring semester and did not register, the university would be unable to open its doors because officials would be unable to staff it.
“They couldn’t staff this university for a 1,000 students if 9,000 of us didn’t pay our tuition,” McCorkle said.
He urged students to stand up with him and stressed he was elected to serve the student body and that is what he would do regardless of who it would upset in the process.
“I’m not here to please nobody,” McCorkle said. “Last year, the students elected me to serve you, so I don’t care if I piss off the president all the way on down to the teachers in the classroom. Because can’t nobody impeach me but you. As long as I’m working for you, I don’t have nothing to worry about.”
McCorkle encouraged students to come out every Wednesday at noon. He called on the administration to come out and listen. McCorkle said he would give a report at the next forum on whether or not there was any resolve.
“To the administration, you know what we are doing,” McCorkle said. “The (SGA) office extended to the administration to come on your own before we submit a formal request for you to hear what the students are talking about.”