How to turn your Student Government from Punchline to Paragon
November 12, 2008 | Contributed by Daniel Walters
When I was a writer for the Whitworthian, I’d always joke that the purpose of the paper was to take the greatest journalistic minds in the school, teach them all the keys, tips, and tricks to feretting out the truth, and then turn that mighty force on the noble goal of making fun the Student Government.
In the 15 year period, from 1993-2008 ASWC– and later ASWU — gradually slouched towards complete irrelevance. The many student committees for changing the school, the student judicial organizations, have fallen silent, replaced by the whims of administration.
In 2005 — when I was on ASWC — I wrote a short Wonderful life parody where the protagonist wishes there wouldn’t be an ASWC. To his horror, he wakes up and realizes that absolutely everything is exactly the same. Except, he has $140 in his pocket. Not knowing how to spend it, he fervently wishes to have the ASWC back.
Hyperbole, obviously. But the point remains. ASWU makes a lot of sound and fury in your E-mail inbox, but they signify practically nothing. I’m not asking for the student government to be given more power — more power in the hands of an incompotent organization would be a horrible thing. I’m asking them to use the power they have more effectively.
While the Donnell Regime last year was a start. It was not perfect — for sure — but it represented a slight improvement over the dismal years past. It was a sliver of what the student government could be.
I don’t know how the ASWU is this year — it may have magically become an incredible force, but if not, here are a few suggestions for transforming the institution into something worth your student fee.
Triple the Constituency Report number. Your job, on ASWU, is not to put on Homecoming. It’s not to sit around and eat pizza and tell your life story. It’s not even to go spend student money to jump off the Blob at Camp Spalding. It’s to represent the students. Unfortunately, that’s harder than turning to your roommate and saying, “Hey, Joe, should Whitworth close down Whitworth Drive?”
Constituency reports are a pain to do — you have to interact with people — but they are also a pretty awesome way of determining what students are thinking. They give you an actual figure.
Do the RIGHT constituency reports: Some constituency reports in the past have asked questions like “What do you think of your Student Government” “Name the student leaders you know” and “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
This is endemic of an insular organization. In some years, the ASWC might as well been enclosed in a Bomb Shelter, for all the interaction its had with the outside world.
The best consititency report focus on specific, controversial issues. Especially things that students are talking and complaining about. “Should Whitworth close Whitworth Drive?” “Should Whitworth seek to have more students, less, or the same number?” “Why do you hate CORE 350 so much?”
Turn those constituency reports into resolutions. Too many times, ASWU will actually get around to producing a consituency report, only to let to say, “Hmmm…. that’s nice,” and then move on. They need to do two things:
1) Send an all-student e-mail with the results of the survey.
2) In many cases, turn that into a resolution. If you find out that all the students hate a particular thing about Core 350, maybe ASWU should turn it into a resolution. It’s one of the better ways to get the administration’s attention and to highlight a contrast between Whitworth’s policies and their customer’s wishes.
Give enough background knowledge with the consituency reports: What the students know and don’t know can detirmine the result of the report. Let’s say you ask them if they want Sodexho to start charging a dollar per to-go box in order to buy biodegradable materials. They might say yes. After all, sustainability, amiright guys? Now lets say you inform them that Spokane uses a Waste to Energy plant, and 80 percent of the garbage is burned up in an incinerator before it has a chance to biodegrate.
You’ll get an entirely different response. Aim to be fair, but also educate. For example, inform them that closing down Whitworth Drive will not only upset the neighbors, it will likely cost, at minimum $500,00.
Let students determine the Agenda, not administration.
I’ve heard administrators “subtly” try to detirmine the agenda of ASWU by saying things like, “You know, we could really make a difference on the issue of [sustainability, racism, steel tarriffs]. We have a grand opportunity here. Let’s not waste it”
And so ASWC gets really excited about pursuing some goal suggested by an admistrator, who may have no idea what students care about. There’s lots of things that students care about, many things that the administration may readily dismiss. Find those things and pursue them.
You can’t change mindsets through legislation. Something bad happens. We’ve got to DO something, ASWU says. So you hold yet another event, or put up a slew of posters reminding people of things like “Bullying is not okay.” The problem is you spend so much time trying to, say, Do Something about the atrocity in Darfur, that you forget about the measuring the opinions of Whitworth.
Slash the required programs: Programs you have to do suck. Programs you want to do, often turn out pretty awesome. Whitworth is already beset by a deluge of programs. My suggestion: Drastically lower the number of required program for all leadership. Have only one required community service event a year per dorm, not 2. True, lazy senators and coordinators will just coast by, but their programs were never very worthwhile to begin with. We need more Real Men of Geniuses and less Green with Envys. We need more labors of love, and less labors of duty.
Slash the number of coordinator positions: When I was Senator I took a lot of flack for being opposed to creating a Cultural Events Coordinator position. But how are we going to solve racism without a Cultural Events Coordinator??!, they exclaimed.
I was opposed for two reasons. First, I felt that segregating the “Cultural” events from the “non-cultural” events would actually exacerbate racial tension on campus, perpetuating an us-versus-them paridigm as opposed to uniting people — as individuals — under a common Whitworth banner.
And second, I felt that Whitworth already has to many Official Leaders. A Cultural Events Coordinator would overlap with the CDAs and the Senior CDAs the RAs and all the Senators interested in putting on a cultural event. And once a Position is created, it is rarely ever destroyed. That’s the way government — even student government works. Scott Donnell was right to observe that this school is beset by an overpowering swarm of programs. His solution, to add a program telling people to relax more, wasn’t a good one, but his insight was there.
We don’t need both a Special Events Coordinator and a Cultural Events Coordinator and an Other Events Coordinator.
If combining some job descriptions means that we have to slash some programs — only concentrate on creating a few incredible events — that’s even better.
Treat student fee money with a sacred respect. I’ve heard a poisonous analogy thrown around when ASWU is choosing how to spend student fee money. “You can either be Santa or Satan.” Essentially, you can be the good guy and answer people’s wishes, or you can be the bad guy and horde the money.
Here’s a better analogy. You can be Santa, if Santa snuck into the kids room, stole around 150 dollars from his Piggy Bank, and then used some of that money to go to Camp Spalding with Santa’s friends.
Repeat after me: It’s not your money. It’s not the school’s money. It’s not magical money that you’ve just got to spend. Invest the money, find ways to turn a penny into an incredible transformation. Heck, if you want to splurge spend your own money. It’s more honest.
Last year, the ASWU did a pretty good job with examining requests for money critically. This needs to continue.
Unfortuntately, right now the ASWU budget is a percentage of tuition. When Tuition goes up at twice-the-rate-of-inflation, as it always does, so does the ASWU budget.
I suggest that Whitworth change the rules so ASWU would be allowed to take that much money from the students, but if it wanted to, it could choose to simply lower student fees — or keep them the same.
Do not punish clubs for spending money wisely. Give clubs money the next year to reward how effectively they spend the money last year. “You did all THAT with half your budget! How much do you want this year.”
Put more money in unallocated: Money in unallocated actually has some oversight over it. Money given to clubs or coordinators can be spent recklessly without ASWU giving permission.
Create a list of money priorities: Rank these financial requests in order of importance: Trip for recreation/club, educational trip, funds for a student to research, an event requesting money for “pizza,” money request for advertising, request to spend $2000 to bring a comedian/speaker/band to campus.
Have leftover dorm money at the end of the year funnel into a Dorm capital account.
There was a time when Senators had to beg, tin cup in hand, door to door, for “Dorm Dues.” So it made sense that Senators were required to spend that money within the year. After all, the people that were donating the money, wanted to have the benefit of it.
But in 2005, that’s changed. Now it’s a tax, as required as tuition. I payed tuition money for an Art Building I’ll never use; part of my student fee money going to fund a future improvement in Warren is the same rationale.
But currently, Wise senators who pench pennies and spend wisely, are left with as much as $300 at the end of year. Not enough to buy a pool table. But that’s a lot of money to waste on a pizza party. The money is simply thrown into Whitworth’s general fund if he doesn’t spend it, and the frugal senator is chided. Fiscal responsibility is punished.
Here’s my suggestion. Each dorm gets a “Capital” account. Leftover money transfers into that account. Any future senator could take money from that Capital account, as long as using it would benifit the dorm for five years or more. That way he won’t waste it on Pizza parties.
Whitworth’s economic rules prohibit this, people say. So change the rules. You may have to go through The Board of Trustees to do it. But believe me, it will encourage Senators to spend their money wisely better than the DORM FUND LIQUIDATION SHOPPING SPREE does now.
Start a competition with Gonzaga. Whitworth doesn’t have anyone to unite against. We need a little school spirit, and that can’t come by just focusing on ourselves or uniting against abstract concepts like Racism and Apathy.
Post your opinions of what happened at each ASWU meeting on the Forum. You shouldn’t have to go to the meeting to have a feeling of what’s going on. The Whitworthian does a good job of providing a summary, but lacks the opinion a senator can infuse into it.
Remember, one of Whitworth’s biggest weaknesses is that it gets freaked out by disagreement. They don’t know how to debate. The ASWU can lead by example, starting debates on key campus issues — things that directly concern Whitworth — and then encouraging students to continue that debate in their dorm rooms, at Saga tables, and online.
Even if Mandeville, Soden, Le Roy, and Robinson never listen to a word the ASWU says, you can still turn it into a powerful, effective organization. But it’s got to be a respectable, focused one first.
Comments
10 Responses to “How to turn your Student Government from Punchline to Paragon”
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I attend all of the ASWU meetings, and cover them for the Whitworthian. As a first hand witness, I agree with a lot of what you’ve said.
A few weeks ago, ASWU took a survey around campus regarding what student’s priorities for the coming year were. The questions were poorly written and difficult to understand, those giving the survey had to provide examples, which were then regurgitated back at them by students, and the results were not organized well. Only 92 student’s opinions were reviewed, and the whole thing was done very poorly.
So ASWU sees the results of this and decides students want the campus to be mores sustainable. They create a task force to work on this, only to find out that Sodexo has already got it under control.
It is extraordinarily frustrating how redundant ASWU seems to be. I agree with the need for restructuring within ASWU. There are too many people there, and an over-representation of some areas of campus. If the system stays the same next year, two or three more people would be added to the process by virtue of the new dorm. I have high hopes that ASWU will attempt to rewrite the Constitution to restructure this year, but we’ll have to see.
As silly as it initially seemed, I think that a rivalry would unite the school a bit. Too often the school launches campaigns against racism or wasteful habits (sustainability). Perhaps a good-natured rivalry might help.
I’d like to comment more on this, but I have a 6 page paper due in several hours. I’m curious as to what people who do not attend meetings have to say on the subject.
By the way, I think more reps is a good thing — it’s more opinions and accurate representation. Not so for the coordinators.
Something I forgot to add: Google the “Coefficient of inefficiency” and you’ll see some of the problem.
A reorganization would have to still center around the dorms — not on “Majors” or “Schools.” I don’t think it’s good to divide the school up that way. Especially because people change majors, etc.
But Daniel, I don’t *care* about apathy.
Especially now that I live off-campus, student government is simply incapable of capturing my interest. Somewhere down the road I am sure I will appreciate it more, especially when it begins to be more relevant to me… maybe.
And yet, you still regularly give them $190 to do with what they please.
I wasn’t aware we had a choice.
I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to do some kind of constituency reports online, just like voting. That way ASWU could reach a broader base, they could do weekly or bi-weekly reports, and student involvement would go way up.
This would take away from the face to face experience of being approached by an actual representative or senator in person, but in my opinion who cares? Whitworth students are too busy to approach these people with minor school concerns and they are generally too busy to attend any ASWU meetings unless they are interested in running for it themselves or they have a special pet project. If all ASWU represents is a way to get free money, then who is actually representing student concerns?
Of course the members are students themselves and student life does a good job of being available, but honestly, when it comes to representing an unbiased portrait of student majority concerns, no such organization exists.
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Going to online-only constituency reports is a bad, bad, bad idea.
The problem? Self-selection bias. The type of student who deletes e-mails, who is lazy, who isn’t especially enthusiastic about something, will be completely ignored. Sure, the door-to-door method isn’t perfect, but at least it offers the senator a chance to explain more about the issue if asked.
If reports went online, there’d be no points to having reps.
Whitworth Students are NOT to busy to bothered by a simple question. If they are, they can just say, “Sorry, I’m too busy.”
The face-to-face experience is valuable in that it not only allows for more nuanced feedback — possibly a suggestion for a better solution — and allows Senators to learn about other concerns people have in the dorms.