STUDENT GOVERNMENT: Even with improvements, SGA must be scrutinized

By: Alex Sorondo / Columnist 

Alex Sorondo / Columnist

In speaking repeatedly about the continuous wrongdoings of a particular person or entity, espousing frustration with their ceaseless shortcomings, you run the risk of coming to consider them your enemy, even if you might not really care much about them beyond what professional boundaries within which you bump heads.

Similarly, should you point to their mistakes and admonish their indiscretions only to then look away when they tend to your concerns and then make no mention of their progress, your criticism will soon fall mute as it becomes clear that, rather than a voice of vigilance, you are just an insatiable curmudgeon with a platform from which to blather.

Thus, credit is due to the Student Government Association for a well-conducted meeting on Oct. 10, where elections were held, voices were heard and progress was announced in almost every college. Although most senators reported only their imminent student surveying, at least they spoke up and stayed focused. Senators stayed off of Facebook, and there was little texting to be seen, which is a considerable improvement from the prior meetings.

Still though, that there should even be a need for such improvement and that, once achieved, it should be heralded as great and certifiable progress is pretty unfortunate. Achievements thus fall far short of clearing the deep-staining stigma of SGA’s previous and potentially recurrent disregard for order, attentiveness, progress, attendance, transparency, efficiency and fidelity to the public they represent and are appointed to serve.

Seeing our SGA make progress five meetings into the semester has prompted me to consider the nature and necessity of political criticism, and the uniqueness of its hassle when you get into college, where the corridors of power are now strolled by your peers, your friends and you as the critic–whether in a newspaper column or a campus conversation–are confronted with the dissonance of knowing that your representatives may not be doing their job well, that they are being lazy or deceptive and ought to be revealed.

At the same time, you feel this reflexive kick of empathy, knowing that your senators also have mid-terms, quarrels with financial aid, headaches over traffic, a miserable time finding parking and a full load of classes, just like you and me. So, it feels less than compassionate to start grinding them for their shortcomings in a position that would probably be difficult to completely satisfy, even if it was all we focused on.

However, just as the average English major marvels at the math major’s passion for numbers, and the math major weeps where an English major smiles, neither one understanding how the other can feel as they do, so too must we commoners marvel at and appreciate the fact that there are students who, sweating through all of the same sorts of collegiate hells that we do, still have the energy and interest to pursue government work, with all of its responsibilities and demands.

It is one thing to start out in SGA with energy and good intentions, another to keep them intact.
As the semester progresses and the burdens of school, work and personal life start to tangle in a palimpsest of troubles, we come to distinguish between the senators who care and the ones just padding their resumes.

When, as a representative, it seems that the people you represent neither keep an eye on nor fully understand the work that you do, a sense of freedom begins to accrue. Autonomy, for a mind of political aspiration, begets an inclination to shortcuts and ethical misdemeanors. Getting away with them builds ego, ego begets laziness and laziness, coupled with ego, lathered with power and marinated in the sewage of political aspiration can breed little Nixonian mutants who will bend the rules and abuse their power to no end.

Ethics are quick to erode under the sway of laziness in any politician who, without a critic’s eye on their agendas, comes to consider him- or herself above consequence, invisible in their misdeeds and thus to underestimate the interest and intelligence of the people they represent.

The SGA is on a good track now, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that it has a hideously sketchy past. Ultimately, it is composed of human beings with agendas, jobs, classes, families and a limited stock of energy as the rest of us. We pay them to do a job, and we need to make sure they do it.