WHEREAS Student Govern-ment is meant to represent the student body as a whole, and be the student voice on campus.
WHEREAS the students elect SG representatives to choose who is given the privilege to represent student voice to administrators and to the greater population.
WHEREAS serving in SG is an opportunity that should be open to any and all students.
WHEREAS SG should be filled with passionate people who seek out and take action on student issues.
WHEREAS SG should be a forum for debate on student issues, where people actively pursue the opportunity to examine problems on campus.
WHEREAS many students who would be good candidates for SG are discouraged by the ticket system.
WHEREAS the SG ticket system enables one ticket to take almost every single seat in the assembly. Over the past four years, a total of 14 people who were not on the winning ticket have won, and most of the time they won those seats only because the incumbent ticket failed to run enough people on their ticket to fill every spot.
WHEREAS the ticket system allows some candidates to be elected into office by hiding behind the accomplishments and ideas of others instead of proving their individual merit or providing any of their own original thoughts.
WHEREAS recent SG assemblies composed almost entirely of one ticket approve nearly all legislation by acclamation. This year, between 21 bills and 17 resolutions, there have been approximately six that have passed without the complete support of the entire assembly.
WHEREAS the ticket system creates an incestuous, one-sided assembly of yes-people who rubber stamp any resolution that the SG president brings before them. Instead of having new people with different perspectives regarding student issues and different ideas on how to approach those issues, the ideas are instead all from the same pool, stagnating there until they slowly rot away.
WHEREAS students are also discouraged from running for SG because few people have a legitimate chance at winning a seat because of the funding required to run a competitive race.
WHEREAS a full ticket is allowed to spend approximately $8,000, an amount that is consistently exceeded each year by the winning ticket.
WHEREAS the current ticket system elects students because of the number of T-shirts they print rather than the number of good ideas they have.
WHEREAS the ticket system has now reached its pinnacle, with only one ticket running uncontested in 15 out of 17 races, and the SG president and vice-president positions are uncontested for the first time in recorded history.
WHEREAS the majority of the people running are running uncontested, giving SG no claim to its being the elected representatives of the student body. Rather, they are the internally selected representatives who are intended to speak on behalf of the student body without any form of consent by the students.
WHEREAS a campus of 50,000 students should be able to produce a surplus of leaders interested in running. The fact that there are so few candidates is a good indication that most students feel SG wastes their time sitting around in a basement arguing over how to publicize what they accomplish and kissing up to administration.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOL-VED that Student Government needs to abolish the ticket system and implement a new system that encourages and empowers students to run, transforming the assembly into an open forum where student issues are discussed and action is taken to improve campus.
OTHERWISE, BE IT RESOL-VED that Student Government be renamed Student Council and begin planning a bake sale fund-raiser for senior prom.
Burniske is a Plan II and UTeach mathematics senior. He ran independent in 2005 and on the Impact ticket in 2006.
Be the first to comment on this article!