Okay, so, I am going to start complaining again, because this stupid thing happened again, and I need to blow off some steam about it.
Before I begin, let me state something that many people here already know: I hate democracy. Oh, the looks on your faces right now… “Wha-at? But Joe, you have to be kidding?! Isn’t that what makes this country great?” Ha. Ha. Ha. Ignoring the obvious fallacy in that statement, let me explain why democracy sucks: it allows stupid people the ability to vote. Stupid people should not have opinions that influence important decisions and processes.
That said, the freshman SGA debate was a joke.
I listened to the debate, and no one has any fricking clue what it means to be an SGA senator. Just like any year, the candidates smiled harder than they were used to, and almost undoubtedly wanted to be in the position for their own gain and not the student body’s.
Some stood out: I really liked some points and bits of honesty that some candidates had. Good people—some could probably make good senators. But I don’t get to vote on them; the freshmen do. And as of right now, in the context of student activities and general campus social mechanics, the freshmen are all more or less morons.
The freshmen vote on freshmen senators because it is an issue of representation (which means that they should have representatives as soon as they walk into campus, but I digress). But, they really have no idea what they’re doing, and ultimately, only the most popular will end up getting into the SGA.
But, let’s just address some of the points in the debate…
Community Outreach: I didn’t know that the SGA senators were designated 100 students to represent. That’s cute. I’ve heard this was new, but I’ve yet to see any messages from “my representative.” Apathy is huge here at Stevens. No one will notice or read your emails or come to any meetings you have, except for people who would’ve circumvented you to go straight to SGA meetings anyway. Odds are, out of the 3,300 or so undergraduate students here, I’d say only about 1,000 are active in any capacity on campus.
Purpose of the SGA: Guys, the SGA doesn’t “magic” away your laptops and make new buildings. Those things are almost 100% out of any student’s influence. Get used to it. By joining the SGA, the most you can do is influence the way the Student Activity Fee is used, which will unsurprisingly go into a lot of the same budgets it’s been going into for years before you even entered schooling.
The fate of The Stute: You all knew this was going to reappear, didn’t you? I mean, what diatribe on the SGA from Joseph Anthony Brosnan wouldn’t somehow involve The Stute’s budget? Ms. Schreiber made an inquiry that boiled down to keeping the printed copy of The Stute, or going online. You all interpreted this as if the option was “lose Student Activity money or don’t.” Sigh. Listen. What makes you, or any member of the SGA for that matter, think you have the right to determine the fate of an organization, nay, a Stevens tradition, 111 years in the making? Such audacity. Oh wait, “But it is on our budget!” Yeah, why is that? The Student Activity Fee should not be funding The Stute‘s publication.
More on this: The Stute may be operated by the students, but the entire campus is its readership. A large portion of the faculty read and report back to The Stute on things, so I know they read it a lot. Yet, they didn’t pay for it. As an ordinary student, you have paid your Student Activity Fee to have a newspaper on campus, whether or not you read it is another thing entirely. But what about your calculus professor? Did they pay? No. A relatable analogy is your calculus professor showing up to a laser tag event on campus. People who do not pay the Student Activity Fee are not permitted to benefit from it: graduate students can’t eat food at events, off-campus persons cannot participate in concerts without paying.
I am not suggesting that we make the faculty pay for The Stute. I am merely suggesting that we should consider alternatives for this campus service to be treated as just that—a service to the entire campus. This is not a gift that the student body gives Stevens; this is something that Stevens should be doing for itself.
So, at the end of the day, what I am suggesting is that Stevens itself pays for this tradition. The entire community benefits from it, and releasing The Stute from explicit control of the SGA and with it the Student Activity Fee will allow The Stute to have a stable and expectable budget (which allows them to keep working on the stuff that matters most, like content generation and layout) and allow them to recruit more workers that would have otherwise been excluded (faculty members and graduate students). Like, why is this not a thing yet? I fail to understand.
Whatever. I am almost done with this stupid school, so what do I care about who is a part of the little microcosm called the SGA and the Student Life that comes with it? Pah. Fakers.
