For once and maybe forever, this year's student elections are actually important.
These are troubled times—on both the global and the domestic front—and next year's student body president will unfortunately be given the right to decide exactly which pennies we're going to pinch. Anderson Hall has also just backed into a new president of its own, and his relationship with SGA next year will probably inform student/administration relations for the duration of his tenure. And most relevantly, SGA themselves have been an embarrassment this year, everyone knows it, and if they don't make some better choices next time around, you can bet that I won't be the only one complaining. Hopefully through all the overblown rhetoric about voices and choices, we'll make a decent choice.
There's an interesting concealed point; our university's recruitment crew makes an awful lot out of the fact that our student government is so comparatively powerful, but is this something about which we should actually be proud? I don't think so, and amidst all their bloodletting, I further wonder: why hasn't anyone thought to turn the gun on them?
We have on more than one occasion this year had fully-tenured professors with decades of relevant experience forced to plead for their lives to inept, self-important kids who neither know nor care about any of the relevant considerations. Of course the situation has ultimately turned out to be a disaster; it should have. But even aside from the matter of disrespect, we ought to also be asking how exactly our student government managed to get so much authority in the first place.
It's not because Anderson Hall is so interested in the pulse of the students; if they were, they'd use the referendum and actually find out. It's also not because the administration actually trusts the student government; no, when the grown-ups feel sufficiently compelled, they're perfectly willing to intervene—à la the marching band fiasco—and nudge SGA back into its kennel. It's not as if the absurdity wasn't already apparent; last year a presidential candidate nearly won the election on the back of the “Ninjas vs. Pirates” meme, and this year he's back, promising to “save the world through juggling.” Why would any reasonable administration ever allow these kind of people power? SGA ought to deciding between Funyuns and Corn Nuts in the campus vending machines, not deciding whether or not the campus arts or media get their necessary funding, and allowing them an inch more is asking to be treated to more of the same confused, obstructionist behavior we've seen this year.
I don't wish to be misunderstood on the general point; many of the student senators are good people who just quietly go about their jobs. Many of them—maybe even most—promptly answer their emails, earnestly listen to their constituents and vote accordingly. I suspect our next student body president is one of these senators. But whoever he might be, he needs to strive for transparency, to never forget that the ultimate prize is a student body not a bolstered resume, and to never forget that he serves at our pleasure rather than the other way around. The person we need to elect president is the person who can best make himself vanish.
