By: Alex Sorondo / Columnist
First, for closure’s sake: the political party system proposed in Fall 2011, which seemed so enticing at first to senators and students alike before losing its luster and stagnating toward the semester’s end, has been tabled indefinitely.
Alex Sorondo / Columnist
Speaker of the Senate Donovan Dawson announced the tabling at the Student Government Council meeting held on Jan. 9 at the Modesto Maidique Campus, suggesting that the plans were being set aside on grounds of Senate inactivity and disinterest, and having underestimated the complexity of the party system.
According to Dawson, SGC-MMC’s party system had been modeled after the strongest features of party systems at larger universities such as Florida State University, University of Florida and Ohio State, schools, Dawson acknowledged, where student involvement is stronger, and enterprises of such ambition can be pursued, achieved and maintained with less rigor.
Dawson’s speech, public and private, is measured for pace. Rarely on professional matters can a judgment be discerned from his tone, at least when speaking to press, and one can see from the occasional pensive pause during conversation that he chooses his words carefully so as to not reveal more than he cares to. He speaks now of the party system endeavor, however, as though exhausted by the thought of it.
“FIU is a commuter school,” he said after the meeting. “Student participation is not robust enough to warrant implementing a whole new system.”
Dawson suggested that the same plan might be right for reconsideration “five or ten years from now,” when the University’s student body has grown enough to not only warrant the effort, but require less of it.
It seemed clear last semester, from the Senate’s reluctance to move forward with the proposal, that if anything were to come of it, the product would have been somewhat contrived.
As a result, our elections would have been forcibly tailored to a system of miserable complexity and unanimous disdain.
While the gradual atrophying of the party proposal might not be a testament to any supreme ambition on the behalf of SGC-MMC, with the exception of those who actually worked on the proposal and braced themselves for the necessary efforts of implementing it, the fact that it was tabled and not pursued out of an eagerness to compete with larger schools is a surprising and mature move.
Granted, it would have been more mature for the senators to speak up and voice their disinterest to begin with rather than let the idea flounder for months, but still.
SGC-MMC Commentary is a feature that evaluates the student council’s performance. Look for it every Friday.
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