As I sit in the newsroom some three hours behind our deadline writing this column, I can’t help but wonder what in the hell has happened to Student Government as a whole. Let’s just look back at the last few months, shall we? As an institution, our Student Government has embarrassed us over and over again. Our SGA President and his Chief of Staff went on the news and called Gucci “gang affiliated,” and we could have easily been sued for slander.
Our Attorney General was caught embezzling money to pay for fliers for a Greek letter organization.
Our SGA Student Senate didn’t impeach the Attorney General because a majority of them hadn’t read the materials provided to them in advance, and many more were “ready to go home,” or didn’t want to impeach him not because he wasn’t guilty (as he clearly admitted it), but because they weren’t sure what to do “after we don’t have an Attorney General.”
The A&T Register has been given untold anonymous tips and emails collectively and to indivdual editors about the disfunction and division of the Executive Board members.And now,we are about to embark upon a general election with no presidential candidate.It’s almost like we are stuck in a state of stupidity, where no one knows who is supposed to do what, how to do what, or when to do it. But when something goes wrong, everyone wants to find someone else to blame.
I’m almost certain that there are a number of candidates who will fuss at the Elections Committee, blaming them for the situation we have gotten into now. However, for once I am going to defend the Committee. This is not their fault. That’s right I said it. It’s not the Elections Committee’s fault.
How can I say that? Let me make it clear for those of you who may not see where I’m coming from:
You cannot say that it is the Elections Committee who wrote Article’s V and VI in the SGA Constitution, which is the root of this mess. You can, however, blame the SGA Senate for not ratifying a Constitution properly since 1995, and then again in 2008.
You cannot say that it is the Elections Committee’s fault that no one truly knows the power of a financial disclosure form, nor can you blame them for the fact that as many of you are reading this, you don’t even know what the words financial disclosure mean.
If any SGA candidate truly wanted to win, they would take the time to request a copy of their competitions financial disclosures and utilize that information to help them in their campiagn to make themselves look more economical and not above the people, or to remove the competition when they exceed the limit.
It isn’t the Committee’s fault that the SGA Constitution has over 1,200 typographical errors, the suggestions provided to fix it over the last four years have been ignored, and no more than about five senators even know how to truly do their jobs.
It is the fault of SGA, and because all of us are a part of SGA it is collectively the fault of every student on this campus.
We have each allowed for the culture of lazy, foolish, Qwuita and Qwan behavior to take over the one thing that students had left: leadership.
SGA as a whole has lost its integrity, its focus on governance, and its role as an advocate for the students. Programming isn’t leading, and complacency isn’t standing up for the people.
By sitting by and not bothering to do anything about the joke of a Constitution we operate under, we have allowed ourselves to completely remove the class officers from the SGA. They are not executive, legislative, or judicial, so if they are not any of these things, what are they?
Who do people have to represent them if their own class officers that they elect don’t really have any place in the government? Do the senators realize what they are not doing? We as a group have allowed SGA to get into this mess, and because every student is a part of it, we as a group are going to have to get SGA out.
As soon as people realize that it is not SGA’s job to plan Homecoming, SpringFest, gym jams, and pagaents, and they realize they are supposed to actually advocate for them and improve the life of the student, things will get better. But until then I just ask, what the hell?
- Dexter R. Mullins