Student Government Association elections are today.
Maybe.
The SGA, once again, has failed to secure enough Elections Commissioners to conduct the elections. Legally, that is.
The SGA’s Constitution and By-Laws, which it supposedly holds sacred, specifies that you need to have one Commissioner per polling station.
There are five polling stations. There are two Commissioners.
The elections, the SGA says, will go on. “Capable” people will serve, even if not officially approved Elections Commissioners.
Which all sounds fine, if you’ve never heard of the SGA until now.
The problem is that this same thing was done last year, when Jim Eltringham was Speaker, and Jeff Howe was President. A little history lesson:
The same problem happened last year, but it was compounded by the fact that accurate numbers of the student body couldn’t be determined until after the elections.
Those elections got thrown out.
The reasons? Well, many were cited, but one of them was that Jim didn’t make sure there were Elections Commissioners at the polling stations. They didn’t have enough then, either. So, the elections were thrown out, and chaos ensued. Political infighting, the scope of which I wish I could say the campus has never seen, erupted between several factions of the SGA.
The interesting thing to come out of this was a new Senate. A more representative Senate, supposedly. They didn’t really do too much though.
Well, now we have a new administration, John Sheehan and Jon Laubinger, who have led the SGA admirably through this time of crisis, along with long time SGA disciple and back room deal-maker Aaron Saunders.
It’s a really interesting and hypocritical note that Gabe Tavarez, Attorney General/Secretary of Finance, or whatever his title is this week, used to be Chief Justice of the Student Judiciary. He’s the guy that threw out the other Senate that said you HAVE to have real Commissioners at the polling places.
How do I know all this?
Well, I used to be in the SGA. I retired last year for good, tired of the political posturing and bolstering of egos. Granted, I wasn’t completely clean, but there are some folks still kicking around in SGA with more skeletons in their closet than John Wayne Gacy.
Don’t take this as a bitter indictment of a new regime – I looked forward to a new SGA, but it seems as though the current decision of the Coordinating Council is just business as usual.
It holds up its By-Laws and proclaims them to be law, the way of the government, but it’s okay for it to break them. As long as you agree with Aaron Saunders politically, you’re all set. You can break any rule you want it seems, so long as no student objects.
The students should object. It is utterly ridiculous to have a student government that speaks from both sides of its mouth. We get enough of that from the real government. Why should I waste my vote in another “illegal” election? Why should anyone?
I realize the importance of having a Senate, of having student representation to the administration from all areas of campus, but to say one thing one year and go back on it the next year is completely duplicitous and shallow.
Attention UMass students – you’re not getting the representation you deserve, and if this sham of an election is allowed to proceed, then you won’t be getting it then, either.
What really needs to happen is more time. There is a vicious cycle of blame – no Area Governments means no appointments to the Elections Commission means no elections which means no Area Governments. The Coordinating Council can break it by just approving the assistants as Commissioners. But oh wait, that’s not exactly specified under its powers. But since it is apparently okay to break the By-Laws and every other law in order to fulfill Comrade Saunders’s wishes of a Senate of his very own, then it should be no problem to push the elections back a week.
It’s ridiculous that our election system is going to be based on a principle of non-objection. If students don’t mind that they’re breaking their own rules, then they probably won’t mind that if this election goes as planned; it’s a testament to the duplicity of Saunders and the old guard SGA. It is hypocrisy in government at its worst.
I could, but I won’t, go through our archives and bust out quotes where Saunders rails against Eltringham after Gabe’s decision, stressing the importance of following the rules.
Now, the rules don’t matter.
It’s all about the students, supposedly, but as long as the students don’t complain, then its fine to break the rules. We’re here for the students, the SGA says, but only if the students don’t mind the SGA talking out of both sides of its mouths, holding the students’ hands in comfort while kicking them at the same time.
I had hoped, as John and Jon said, that this would be a new year, a new SGA. It seems as though Saunders’s ego-driven thirst for an election and Senate, and the lack of true character on Coordinating Council to oppose him will make liars of Sheehan and Laubinger. Whether Jon and John realize it or not, the Legislative branch of their Civics class experiment is poised on the brink of throwing the whole works into disarray.
Push the election back, SGA. Follow the rules that you yourselves hold so dear. If you start off on this foot, it won’t be long until the SGA is once again a punch line in some professor’s joke.
