Home > Insight

Schoolyard antics supplant student needs
By Zoë Williams
williamz@mscd.edu

Between May and October, with 19 people, a $120,000 budget, monthly stipends and weekly meetings, the Student Government Assembly has had abundant opportunities to serve the needs of Metro students. But with all those resources, very little has come forth in terms of student service. This leaves one to ask what exactly the SGA has been doing for the past five months.

Remember the elementary school playground and those nice sandboxes? Everyone would pile in, start games and get bored in a couple of minutes. Instead of moving on to play hopscotch, the kids would start bickering over toys or calling each other names. Before they knew it, the bell for recess would ring and nothing had happened except for some sand throwing.

Aside from the obligatory involvement in administrative decisions, this is what our SGA has been doing.

Since May the position of vice president has been open. President Jack Wylie has been asked to present a candidate to be voted on by the senate.

So far Wylie has brought forth two candidates. The first was shot down before the senate hearings could occur. The second started a debate that is headed to the student court as a part of a constitutional battle that could take months to solve.

In the process, Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board representative Jordan Bair resigned, leaving yet another vacancy in the SGA. Name-calling, impeachment threats and a whole lot of sand have been flying.

This is what happens when a group of people is herded into a small enclosure, provided with a few toys and ends up spending more time focusing on personal differences than the issues at hand. Thus creating the 2006 SGA Sandbox.

Metro students have been accused of apathy for years. We have low voter turnout, few people interested in running for SGA office and even fewer offering input to elected officers. These circumstances have been blamed on students at a commuter campus who hold down jobs, support families, attend classes and participate in their communities.

To call us apathetic may be accurate, but students need a reason to care. At a school that has virtually no positive contact with its SGA, is it a surprise students are left without motivation?

Call me optimistic, but I truly believe if the interests of students were addressed, and if proactive change was made on campus, we would be inspired to consider involving ourselves in the SGA.

Students care about food options on campus. The Daily Grind, Metro’s beloved and independently owned café, is leaving at the end of this semester. The SGA has influence over what will fill that space.

With ever-increasing tuition due to budget cuts at the state level, there has never been a more critical time to have student representation at the state Capitol. I do not mean this winter, at the beginning of the legislative session, but now. Legislators that are not up for re-election can be approached and informed about Metro’s needs to ensure that decisions about higher education are made with Metro in mind. One does not need to be a lobbyist to do this.

There are hundreds of other issues on this campus. Establishing on-campus bicycle paths, improving security and increasing diversity resources are just a few.

Why not use that budget to put on programming for students? Or use it to conduct polls to discover what the primary concerns of the student body are? How about spending less time in meetings and more time talking to students? SGA representatives can come into classes, club meetings and speaking events, or walk around the campus to make their presence known.

For the good of the student body, the current vice-president debacle needs to be dropped. The SGA needs to make an open-call for applications, get recommendations or have a special election. These conflicts are petty and meaningless to the student body. It is time to get out of the sandbox and into the campus community.

By the time students return from fall break, we should see our SGA brushing the sand off their slacks and moving on to the big picture of funding, resources and serving student needs. If they do not, perhaps it is time to ask if any of the officers are right for the job.