The behavior from several of our future student leaders during this year’s SGA elections was nothing short of disgraceful.
Obviously at the top of the list is the hacking of current president Brooke Dugas’ email account . To break laws in an attempt to sway a student government election blows my mind. Such tactics are a new kind of low, and hopefully the person responsible will be punished accordingly.
More negativity filtered into the election after claims that neither presidential candidate Sophie Barksdale or vice presidential candidate Jessica Richards were qualified to run. Several people scrawled these complaints across Facebook walls and, in the process, came right up to the line of the election code and spit on it.
As it turns out, both Barksdale and Richards were qualified candidates. It’s easy to see why people would get confused, however, considering the complexity of the requirements to seek these offices.
To be an executive officer, you must first have served on the senate. To run for president, you must first have been an executive officer.
To put that in plain English: Normal people can’t be our leaders. In any given year, the eventual president is a product of years of grooming from within the organization. High-achieving students who didn’t start with Student Government early in their academic careers can’t hold any top positions and never will.
The rules are obvious barriers to democracy. With such rules, Student Government is more like a club that promotes from within, rather than a voice for all students. If it were a voice for the students, then any student leader would be allowed to seek leadership roles within the body.
But, put all that on hold for the moment and look at the problems at hand. The complexity of these rules was a huge contributor to this year’s negativity.
Not once during campaigning did I hear what any candidate would bring to the table. How are they going to handle tuition increases and cuts? How will they protect our academics in these tough financial times? What kind of services or improvements would they give the students if elected?
Instead what we got was a constant debate about whether someone was qualified based on arbitrary rules that were put in place to protect themselves from intruders (how ironic). The bickering over these rules made this election one of the pettiest exchanges I’ve ever witnessed.
The students deserve better than that.
The first order of business for the next slate of Student Government leaders should be to abolish these barriers to democracy by amending the bylaws and opening elections up to everyone.
Also, they need to make sure the changes actually make it into the bylaws.
To clear up the Barksdale controversy, election officials had to check minutes from meetings three years ago to confirm the executive vice president was in fact eligible to run for president. You wouldn’t know it from the bylaws because no one bothered to put the amendment in.
It’s staggering to me changes to the law from three years ago have yet to be reflected in the governing documents. It doesn’t inspire much confidence in the organization, and you can bet I won’t forget it the next time SGA comes asking me for a fee increase.
I’m not inclined to give my money to people who don’t have their own house in order, and I doubt I’m alone.
New leaders: Your first act as the new faces of student leadership at ULM was an abysmal failure and an embarrassment. Clean up your act – and your laws – before the next school year starts.
Students as fine as those at ULM deserve the leadership to match