Fellow Senators,
I draft this letter to you expressing my dissatisfaction and reserved optimism. For a majority of this year we have been plagued by vague, counterproductive buzz words, i.e. “consistency” and “transparency”. We choose to rally behind personal objectives instead of reflecting the wants and desires of our constituents.
Ignoring the fact our “open” meetings seldom feature non-Senate students—despite the accessible meeting time—we fail to recognize our elected privilege. It is crucial that we remember the student body voted every one of us into office, we were not self-appointed. Rather than acting on their behalf, we make our decisions based on personal beliefs, but our heart and gut are not our constituency.
We are out of touch and out of control. We need to reintegrate student opinion and welcome discussion outside of the meeting time. The opinionated student body’s interests remain absent from our agendas. Internal dynamics, although structurally important, do not reflect the general concern of the larger student body, especially when left unexplained. When our discussions endlessly revolve around our own conflicts, we fall victim to circumlocutory ramblings.
This needs to change. The most recent issue of the Sadie Lou Standard addresses our ineffectual year. The blasé attitudes of the other articles directly reflect our inability to connect with our constituents. However, while the Standard announces the problem, it offers no viable remedy.
Here is how we do it. First and foremost, our goals need to be tenable. Attention must focus on the micro issues rather than the macro. All of our small accomplishments will amount to noteworthy productivity. Please take “hate speech” as an example. Instead of concentrating directly on SLC Anon, we decided to target hate speech. Our taskforce did not address either issue, and the website was removed because of Terms of Use violation. Hate speech still exists.
I propose the list below as the most immediate and accessible forms of implementing the necessary metamorphosis.
1. In accordance with standard procedure, to show equality, have Senate attend Student Life and request Pub Table space for regular solicitation of agenda topics from passers-by.
2. Reconfigure the next month’s set agenda topics to directly reflect the pertinent concerns.
3. Post our week’s agenda around campus similar to an advertisement for a dance.
4. Host Meet-the-Senators events. Provide free food. Order food late because people will stay. This does not mean follow current by-laws, and host exclusive class-events. This means welcome the entire student body once a month and just have a big social*.
We need to make our presence known: emails are easy to delete, people are difficult to ignore. As Senators, we act as direct mechanisms of change on this campus. Let’s start now.
Signed.
Senator ‘XX
*No ice cream.