THEIR OPINION

By Alan Franklin

Reading the fine print could have saved us, then and now

The tiny percentage of Metro students who have actually paid attention to their disintegrating student government over the past year won't be surprised by what I'm about to say.

The fact is, I've been accused of a lot of pretty nasty stuff since last spring. I "sabotaged" last year's elections, you know. I engineered the forcible passage of "questionable" election bylaws through the SGA executive committee. I didn't do enough to recruit candidates. After I resigned from the commission, I was even seen once or twice near the dreaded "illegal polling station" that threw the whole proceeding into chaos. Oh, the humanity.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that the SGA doesn't read anything you give them to approve.

It's possible that people didn't want to join their little club last year because they got over their own wet-nosed social inadequacies back in grade school. And maybe there was never a problem, legally or ethically, with throwing some laptops on a table and inviting students to vote there if they want: it only became a problem when the incumbents realized the outcome might be something other than what they had in mind.

What you've seen over the past year is two very different philosophies at work in your student government elections. One approach sought the broadest possible student participation, a level campaigning field, and lively debate about Metro's future and the SGA's role in it. The other is the approach we've seen from my successor, election commission chair, Richard Boettner: an incoherent grab bag of oppressive nanny dictates and harsh penalties for anything remotely 'disorderly.'

Apparently, though, if you catch Mr. Boettner on the right day, he'll tell you to forget about those rules and more-or-less do whatever the hell you want. It's instructive to note that the candidate he told to disregard the rules is the former chairman of the Auraria College Republicans, just like the sitting president and student trustee. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, though I'm glad the Met was here to ask the question, since the SGA Executive was doubtless a little conflicted.

This incident cannot help but raise larger and more troubling questions about our SGA, who, after the disaster of last year's elections and all their hand-wringing about the bylaws I wrote, apparently didn't even bother to edit Boettner's rules for spelling or grammar-let alone appropriateness to govern an election.

Are we to believe that Richard Boettner "forced" these laughable guidelines through a helpless SGA Executive like I did? The sitting president expressed shock that Boettner had contradicted his own rules, and promised to look into it, but that's secondary at this point to the larger problem of rules that are poorly written, childishly restrictive, and arbitrarily applied - isn't it?

Based on my experience with these people last year, I'm guessing this is just the way they like it. If the new SGA administration decides they would like to start again, with election bylaws that are written in complete sentences, they should feel free to peruse the perfectly good document I compiled for them last spring.

Perhaps this time they'll actually read it.

Alan Franklin is the former chair of the Election Commission. He may be reached at franklal@mscd.edu