This semester’s Student Government election has become less about campaigning on a firm platform and more about petty squabbling, court decisions and tiny details of unorganized rules. The manner in which election issues were handled this weekend is not conducive to a student-oriented Student Government. Members of the governing body should realize that by hiding in their ivory tower and making important decisions that affect the entire student body, they are losing the interest and trust of their constituency.
Both sides of the debate to disqualify the Campaign for Change executive candidates base their arguments on rules and regulations students probably do not understand or care about. Don’t permit the SG drama-entrenched courts to make the final decision. Students should have the final choice concerning who should lead their Student Government. Let students vote and decide who will represent them next year. Stop bogging down the process with unnecessary quibbling and bogus complaints.
Each campaign vying for executive offices includes some form of transparency and student inclusion on their stated platform.
But if the candidates truly want to include students in dialogue and decisions, the election process is a good place to start.
The closed environment in which SG makes their decisions is deplorable. Meetings to hear cases can begin well after most students leave campus, and some last for hours, stretching well into the next day. Both hearings concerning election matters concluded near 2 a.m.
The time and length of the meetings are not the only problems at hand. The rules and decisions made by SG courts confuse candidates and their staffs. If the students who spend their lives entrenched in SG confuse themselves, then the students most affected by the decisions but have busy lives to lead will never have the time to understand the complex rules that are the foundations of SG. Student court proceedings and decisions are painfully wordy and do not convey ideas to the masses. Their decisions base themselves solely on pieced together rules and precedents involving irrelevant issues.
SG members must realize that students of the University are their top priority. Let the election be decided by a vote.
That’s just simple democracy.
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