1999 SGA-SEA Conference
Town-Gown Relations Breakout Session
Chris Hoofnagle, School of Law Senator

To evaluate your local government’s student-friendliness, look for:
· Zoning regulations that segregate students from certain neighborhoods.  These discriminatory regulations usually operate under the pretense of density regulation.  
· Inflated Local Option Sales Taxes that affect students or transients.  These taxes are unfair because they shift tax burden from high-cost residents (locals who have kids in school) to low-cost residents (college students who don’t use local services such as the public schools or hospital).  
· Containment of students in low-quality areas with undesirable land uses.  Zoning is used to place multi-family housing in areas surrounded by garbage or sewage treatment facilities.
· “Studentmandering:” designing voting districts to split the student vote.  By splitting the student vote, locals can easily control the student population.

To evaluate your school’s advocacy of students in town-gown politics, look for:
· Compliance with the President’s Declaration (http://www.uga.edu/sga/iac/dec.htm), a 1999 Campus Compact document signed by 50 college and university presidents that details services that a proactive institution provides to students.  Other Campus Compact professional standards are online at http://www.uga.edu/sga/iac/dec.htm),http://www.compact.org/.
· Compliance with the Joint Statement on Student Rights (www.uga.edu/sga/iac/rights.htm), the seminal statement on student freedoms and rights for quality institutions of higher education.  Written in 1967, the Joint Statement has been endorsed by every professional association in higher education.  
· Compliance with NASPA policy checklist (http://www.naspa.org/publicp/checklist.htm).  NASPA sets professional standards for student affairs personnel ranging from free speech to voter registration.  
· Compliance with NASPA’s Principles of Good Practice for Student Affairs (http://www.uga.edu/iac/pgp.htm).  This document has an inventory that a student can use to evaluate her school’s student affairs policies.
· Contact me with any questions you may have: choof@arches.uga.edu.


Student activist resources

· UGA-SGA page (www.uga.edu/sga/) contains information on open records laws, Georgia security deposit law, teaching evaluations, tenure decisions, student leadership, etc.
· The Chronicle of Higher Education (www.chronicle.com) is the most comprehensive journal on higher education news and issues.
· Policy.com’s student forum (http://policy.com/student/index.asp) has information on a wide range of student issues.
· The Student Press Law Center (http://www.splc.org/) has a state open records request generator and information about student newspaper rights.
· Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the press (http://www.rcfp.org/tapping/index.cgi) has a complete state-by-state guide for the use of state open records laws.
· Parascope (http://www.parascope.com/foia/foia.html) has an automatic Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) generator and a guide to use of FOIA.  FOIA is the federal law version of a state open records act.  Your state open records laws are sometimes more effective than the Federal FOIA.  
· The American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.aclu.org/students/students.html) has web resources devoted to student issues including organizing and free speech.
· Harden Political Infosystems (http://hpi.www.com/) has information on your state and county.
· The Federal Election Commission (http://www.fec.gov/votregis/vr.htm) has online voting information.
· Register to vote (http://register2vote.org/) will register voters online or send a voter registration form to your house.
· The Ohio State University Off-Campus Student Services (http://128.146.217.200/) program helps students find apartments and offers legal advice to students involved in disputes with their landlords.  This service should be offered at every school with a large commuting population.




Strategies:

· Students are “transients.”  You’re only in your college town for 4 or 5 years, and generally, most students don’t know the political history of their college town.  To combat problems with institutional history, document you actions: Keep a scrapbook of articles organized by topic.  Or, mimic the SGA institutional history database (www.uga.edu/), which contains every document produced by SGA since 1988.  Also, faculty advisors who are long-term members of the community may be able to help you with the political history of your town.
· Make sure your county government knows about you.  Host a social gathering, or meeting where SGA members meet with local government officials.
· Make sure your county government knows that students vote.  Register students to vote, and use statistics to show that there are many 18-24 year olds out there voting.
· Make sure your students know what’s happening: Have your school newspaper cover town-gown relations and politics.
· Remember that personal problems are political problems.  All quality of life issues are caused by political decisions.  Simple issues, such as the placement of a sewage treatment plant near student housing, can be influenced by your awareness and action.  

Voter Registration Amendment
(Section 489: Program Participation Agreements)

Requires that institutions make a good faith effort to distribute a mail voter registration form, requested and received from the State, to each student enrolled in a degree or certificate program and physically in attendance at the institution, and to make such forms widely available to students at the institution.

The institution shall request the forms from the State 120 days prior to the deadline for registering to vote within the State. If an institution has not received a sufficient quantity of forms to fulfill this section from the State within 60 days prior to the deadline for registering to vote in the State, the institution shall not be held liable for not meeting the requirements of this section during that election year.

Adopted by the Council of Law in Higher Education: http://www.cphe.org/sa-voter.htm
Adopted by NASPA, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education: http://www.naspa.org/publicp/checklist.htm


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