As students of LSU, we have the right to a strong voice that can further our interests on our behalf: a voice that can do what is necessary to have our goals and agendas met.
We need someone who can root out the gridlock of Student Government and effectively carry out the collective will of the majority of students at the University — minority voices and special interests be damned.
It is with this in mind that I call upon SG to amend its constitution to enable the office of Student Government President to craft, pass, and sign legislation without interference from the Student Senate, along with its new ability to appoint justices to SG’s judicial branch.
On Sept. 11, the SG met for a third time to discuss amending the constitution in regards to judicial appointments and adding term limits to the offices of president and vice president.
It took three separate meetings to discuss something as rudimentary as term limits.
Even still, the new amendments will not come into effect until students vote on them in this election.
I thought we had a student government to take care of this sort of thing for us?
Under my proposed system, the president would be able to draft such measures, and have them enacted before the day was out.
Think about it. If John Woodard was enabled to act without restraint, he could single-handedly fulfill every campaign promise and bullet point in the course of a week.
Skeptics, of course, will scream their heads off about the president having no effective checks to his power. To those skeptics I say this: Why should we fear Woodard, or any other SG president?
He clearly has our best interests at heart, as demonstrated by the return of free Scantrons and blue books. We should applaud him for such generosity, and granting him more authority would only help us in the long run.
Now, let’s talk about the constitution for a moment. In the United States, our Constitution is only seven articles long, with 27 amendments. It details in a short space how the government is to be set up, the powers of each branch and what it is and is not allowed to do.
The SG constitution is a mind-boggling, 129-page quagmire that details every contingency, plan and procedure that SG could ever contemplate.
With just one executive office and the judicial branch, they could scrap the whole thing and rewrite it so short and simple that it would make the Founders smile.
There is the added benefit that no considerations would have to be made for the individual senior colleges and their respective interests; it would be a constitution benefitting the whole of the student body.
The representatives could instead be organized as an advisory committee, a de facto educational politburo that could assist the president in deciding important matters while not standing in the way of initiatives.
Hell, I don’t see how such a system could ever go wrong. With one autocratic leader at the helm, any sort of gridlock would be eliminated overnight, the most qualified persons would occupy any posts within the executive branch and he could act with near impunity, with the judiciary checking his power in regards to the SG constitution.
Imagine it: complete order, cohesion and efficiency in SG. Maybe then it would be the useful tool it was intended to be.