The SGA Senate is made up of 50 senators from nine colleges (graduate and law school included). Unlike the U.S Senate, it is not two per college. Rather, the number of senators from each college is proportional to the size of the college. Thus, the business school has nine senators, while the college of nursing has two.
One main issue is that while the business school may have more representatives than the nursing college, senators don’t necessarily operate with the interest of their respective college in mind due to the fact that most legislation doesn’t deal with specific colleges (with the notable exception of block seating).
The problem this creates is that while senators may come from two different colleges, their backgrounds could still be very similar. (By background, I mean either socio-economic upbringing pre-college or involvement in certain organizations such as the Honors College, greek system, Mallet, etc.) This creates a lack of diversity not necessarily related to race, gender, etc. but rather of thought.
A lack of diversity of thought presents problems of its own. The first, and most obvious, is that if everyone has just one special interest in mind, then other areas of campus become neglected. Moreover, thinking becomes rigid; alternative solutions become harder to come by and a brute force approach is utilized to solve problems that prove themselves trickier than usual. Finally, an atmosphere is created in which objections are stifled before they are made because of a fear of social chastisement.
It is no secret that many of our SGA Senators are also involved in UA’s greek system. This has created (perhaps unfairly, perhaps not) a pervasive belief that those senators first and foremost look out for this community above all else. While not inherently unreasonable – after all, why wouldn’t a person take steps to provide for his or her community – it creates a situation in which independent senators view themselves as an entirely opposite political faction. This is ineffective because it makes the assumption that all students who aren’t greek all want the same thing.
The goal, and I admit it sounds somewhat counterintuitive, is to create a legislative body consisting of members who, at their core, hold the interest of specific groups of people above all else. In doing so, and gathering representatives from all organizations and subcultures, we create a legislature that most represents the student body and, through consensus, we achieve diversity of thought and government action that reflects it.
This plan means senators from the Honors College specifically, not just a senator from the engineering school who is also an honors student. This means senators from Mallet, too, as well as from the fraternity system and the sorority system (I think it is important for those last two to have their own senators), and any other major student organization on-campus now or in the future. Since these are the largest student organizations on campus (and thus have the most influence), I believe the number of senators should be capped at two, or at least some equal number. This is in addition to the various colleges, whose senators would also be capped at the agreed-upon limit.
The second major change in this plan is the creation of a second legislative body. This body would be made up of the minor clubs and honor societies at UA. The number of representatives from each club and honor society would be determined by the size of the club, since the organizations do not have the same sort of campus influence as the organizations in the Senate. The representatives would be chosen by the organizations’ members in whatever manner they choose. In fact, participation by the club could be optional, though I imagine some sort of incentive could be established to encourage participation.
Obviously, there are still details that would need to be discussed, including which club or organization falls into which legislative body and why. However, I think that by following this plan to overhaul the way the SGA legislative branch operates, we can create a student government that is held more accountable because its members would best reflect the people who elected them.
John Davis is the chief copy editor of The Crimson White. His column runs on Monday.
