The Facts: Student Senate plays a major role in social life on campus and University affairs. Only 25 of its theoretical approximate voting corps of 64 were popularly elected by students.

Our Opinion: Students and student leaders alike, must see the importance of elected representation to Student Senate legitimacy. The current make-up of the University’s ‘elected body’ of student leaders is unacceptable. Student Senate plays a fundamental and vital role on campus. It drafts legislation on campus problems, lobbies on students’ behalf to University and external governing bodies and plays a role in fund appropriation – especially in regard to student organizations. Therefore, many students would guess that its members – an elected body – represent a broad range of colleges, disciplines and academic classification. Under perfect conditions, in which students run for every available seat, the Student Senate should hold about 64 members. In reality, the Senate has nowhere close to that number of Senators and less than half of them are elected. Most of the body is thus composed of appointed senators – a system, which honestly executed or not, reeks of patronage. At the last Student Senate meeting – its first of the semester – nine students dropped out of the body. Those resignations left the Senate – according to the information posted on the Senate Web site – with 41 voting members. Of those members, only 25 were popularly elected and hold voting seats. Without even accounting for the number amongst that group who ran unopposed, the remaining voting body had 16 appointees. As the Senate attempts to generate a more collected caucus, the number of Senators appointed by Student Senate President Kelli Rogers is likely to climb even more. As was previously mentioned, the Senate does valuable work and many of its members commit countless hours to the University with little or no appreciation. But it would be imprudent to ignore the manner in which Senate is staffed. It should cause students to ask if the members are truly representative of the campus. In reality, many of its members represent a constituency they are not students in and presumably do not understand the needs of. For instance, Senate has a sophomore in education representing lifelong education and another sophomore in political science representing the College of Natural Resources. Constituencies are established on the basis of proximity and contact. If senators no longer meet those requirements, as seems to be the case with many senators, they cannot possibly represent those constituents’ interests and Student Senate has lost the claim of popular authority and consent. Students must get more involved in Student Government, that’s as obvious solution. But Student Senate must reassess the basis of its authority and how constituencies are assigned, regardless of traditions.