MU made its first appearance at the SEC Exchange last weekend.
Lauren Damico, Missouri Students Association secretary of auxiliaries, said the exchange set the stage for MU’s entrance into the conference.
“One of the most beneficial things was just us kind of knowing now what we’re going into as a campus community,” she said. “I came out extremely confident. It was very evident to me that Mizzou is top tier in student governments among SEC schools.”
MU’s membership in the SEC will officially take effect July 1.
MSA President Xavier Billingsley, who attended MU’s last Big 12 Student Government Leadership Conference in November, said the experience was reassuring.
“It was just a great learning experience,” he said. “I feel very comfortable with the University of Missouri going into the SEC right now.”
Billingsley said MSA stood out among the other student governments. Even though MSA does not have the largest student government budget in the SEC, he said it offers the most services.
“We manage the most programs, and we provide a lot more services than anybody in the SEC,” he said. “That’s a huge compliment, we can pretty much brag on that.”
Billingsley complimented other SEC schools’ athletics programs, saying he would like to do more with MU’s program. He also said he admired several of the schools’ ability to maintain a smoke-free campus.
“(A smoke-free campus) is something (where) I’m like, ‘If other schools in the SEC can do that, why can’t we?’” Xavier said.
Overall, Billingsley said he was impressed with the SEC after the conference.
“There were programs that weren’t in the Big 12 that I saw in the SEC,” he said. “The SEC had quite a bit of programming going on.”
MSA Chief of Staff Steven Dickherber said the conference sparked new ideas for MSA. He said he and the other members of the MSA cabinet went to the exchange feeling like they had a handle on their projects, but came back wanting to expand.
“We spent 24 hours there and (when) we came back, the van ride back was just buzzing with (new ideas),” Dickherber said.
Dickherber also thought MU stood out among the other schools present.
“Being from the University of Missouri, I think we are one of the best funded schools, I think we’re one of the best organized schools, I think we do some of the most programming in the entire SEC,” he said.
Dickherber said he worried being new to the conference would put MU “at the bottom” of the conference for a while, but that was not the case.
“After we spoke to all the student leaders on campus, I felt as though Mizzou was going to be leading the way in the SEC as far as student government (and) programming goes,” he said.
Damico said though MSA runs somewhat differently than other SEC schools’ governments, she felt welcomed into the conference.
“It was really good to get all of us together and exchange ideas,” she said. “I think that’s always good to collaborate and work together to better the conference as a whole.”