As the semester wears on, the Missouri Students Association is facing declining attendance and retention rates, according to MSA records.

MSA Senate Speaker Evan Wood said attendance is not better or worse than previous years, but Secretary of Auxiliaries and former senator Matt Sheppard recognizes the lack in senator attendance.

“From being in Senate so long I have noticed a trend,” Sheppard said. “At the beginning of each semester attendance picks up because we get new people, but it tends to drop off as the semester goes on.”

As senators become busier throughout the year, they tend to drop out, MSA senator Garrett Bergquist said.

“I have noticed that there hasn’t been as many people in attendance in the three years that I have been on Senate,” he said. “We are getting more attrition this year.”

According to the MSA full Senate attendance records, attendance fell to a semester low of 78 percent senators present and peaked at 91 percent over four meetings.

Attendance records were requested by The Maneater on Jan. 27 and were received Feb. 4. Although the closure of MU’s campus due to severe snow affected the speed at which the records could be obtained, the records, which are public, were incomplete.

The records that were received documented attendance of meetings six through nine. Wood said there were eight full Senate meetings during first semester but that more than four meetings should be documented in the attendance records.

But retention is more of a problem than actual attendance, Bergquist said.

Certain committees tend to retain more members than others, Sheppard said.

Operations Committee Chairman Justin Mohn has experienced first hand a lack in committee attendance and retention.

“Attendance has been a consistent problem, but retention is our biggest problem,” Mohn said.

Operations Committee has three members, including Bergquist and Mohn.

“Half a dozen members would be nice,” Mohn said.

Senate needs to do a better job at advertising in order to obtain more members, Bergquist said.

“We lose members and then we can’t recruit new people,” he said. “There are 500 student organizations. People want to get involved in some way on this campus.”

Although attendance is an issue throughout MSA, it does not affect the work MSA does, Sheppard said.

“Looking at what MSA needs to get done, the amount of people we have is not a problem,” he said. “But for as many Senate seats as we have open it is.”

Regardless of attendance, students are being represented, Mohn said.

“Superficially it might seem students are losing their advocates, but their biggest advocates are the ones that consistently show up,” Mohn said.