You read all about it in the Sept. 5th edition of the Guilfordian. Student participation in Community Senate last year was pitiful, but, with a little fine-tuning, Senate has improved and is now better than ever.
Actually, I’m lying. To be honest, student involvement is just as bad, if not worse.
In past years, in addition to the Senate seats reserved to fill basic executive positions (such as president and vice-president) and other specific student representative categories (day students, athletic students and transfer students, for example), there were a number of seats for student representatives from each academic class.
However, no one in the student body cared much about Senate, and subsequently, almost no one ran. So, in a brilliant attempt to spark more interest, Senate decided to wipe out the class representatives and replace them with club representatives.
Representatives may now be elected from eight categories of clubs: “religious,” “social concerns,” “awareness,” “publications’,” “educational,” “sports,” “martial arts” and “special interest.” Now we have Senate as the college’s own Uncle Sam, targeting in on specific clubs and saying, “I want you.”
The major problem, however, remains: students do not care.
There are two major problems with this new Senate structure. One is the way that the new groups have been divided.
Is Senate aware that the Yachting Club, for example, has absolutely nothing to do with yachts? And what about members of the chess, checkers and Scrabble clubs – do they ever break a sweat during their meetings?
Well, guess what. All the clubs I just mentioned are currently included in the “sports” category.
This means that a rugby player, for instance, could lose a spot that they want on Senate to the world’s next Bobby Fischer because a chess player, as far as Senate is concerned, is an athlete.
The second problem goes beyond basic structural problems. It does not matter how Senate allocates its representative seats because, overall, students simply do not want to participate.
Allow me to demonstrate with a conversation that I witnessed between new Mary Hobbs Hall representative, third-year Jessica Runyon and another girl on the evening of Sept. 2, the day election results were released:
“Hey! Congratulations on Senate!”
“Huh?”
“The Mary Hobbs representative spot.”
“Senate?”
“Yeah, you won. Didn’t you hear?”
“I never even ran. How am I on Senate?”
It gets better. I never campaigned either, but a couple of friends voted for me as a practical joke, and I lost the Mary Hobbs representative seat to Runyon by only one vote.
And believe you me, Kathy Oliver on Senate would be pure madness.
Senate’s solution to the students’ nonchalant response should not be altering the capacity in which students are asked to join, but to alter the way Senate is seen by potential representatives.
Maybe the answer is to sponsor a blow-out party for the student body, or perhaps to send out pamphlets or e-mails advertising Senate’s functions on campus, but the Senate needs to get on that map somehow, because simply existing is clearly not doing the trick.