RSAT a wakeup call for flawed SA

11/28/12 6:00pm

 

The discussions which took place during the Student Association meetings on Nov. 19 and 26 on the creation of the Rice Student Action Team brought up a number of issues (see story pg. 1). The Thresher agrees that the creation of a committee with stated goals which would seem to fall entirely under the jurisdiction of the SA would undermine the SA's authority. Further, the Thresher believes bringing in outside consultants, even Rice alumni, to provide leadership and counsel in solving the problems the undergraduate body faces would be counterproductive. While outside advice may at times be called for, the Thresher believes that the experience of solving our own problems is essential to Rice's undergraduate experience and that RSAT, in its proposed form, would take some of that experience away from the student body. Finally, the Thresher has some concerns about placing too much transformative power in the hands of a group of unelected students and outsiders. However, the proposal to create RSAT does illustrate the disillusionment some members of the student body have with regard to the SA. If the SA were functioning as it should, no one would have thought RSAT necessary. 

The Thresher believes the issues with the SA are not with its individual student leaders, but rather with its current organizational structure and procedures. The Thresher has several suggestions for potential avenues of reform, but in order for the SA to maximize the participation of the student body in the SA, it will be necessary to consult the student body as a whole. 

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One of the primary purposes of the SA should be to provide support and legitimacy to motivated students trying to organize university-wide changes or events which are relevant to the undergraduate student body. While the current committee structure of the SA encourages students interested in influencing some aspect of the undergraduate experience to join one of the three committees in order to do so, the Thresher believes the new student representative system in particular bogs the committees down. The committees must assign the NSRs to problems in which the NSRs may have little interest and thus little motivation. A more effective system would have motivated students of all years, including freshmen, volunteer to work on specific problems or events as they were identified. In some cases, those who identified the problems would also be the best qualified, or at least the most motivated, to work toward their solutions; in others, the framework of the SA would be necessary to find students who had a particular interest in the given problem. If no students could be found who were motivated to solve a problem, it would suggest that no students were bothered enough by the problem. While the committee heads could be an important organizational tool, the committees themselves would no longer be necessary as such. In any case, it seems likely to the Thresher that this division of labor would encourage more students to get involved with student government, even if only to work on a single project - especially if they only had to commit to a single project. 

This change suggests another, in order to ensure and increase student involvement with the SA. The attendance of current SA meetings seems to consist of the same group of students from week to week, and while senators communicate the SA's projects and plans to their colleges, the SA's leadership needs to be more proactive in engaging members of the student body who do not attend the SA's Monday night meetings. In conjunction with our previous recommendation, having members of the SA's executive board and committee heads frequent college cabinet meetings to discuss the ideas of students there and find student volunteers to work on specific projects would be another step toward broadening student involvement in student government. 

The college governments have a higher level of priority, importance and impact on students' lives than the college-wide government. Thus, the structure of the SA should reflect that; elected members of the SA should be fully integrated with their colleges first and report to the SA second, rather than having SA senators be more integrated with the SA and then report to the colleges. To address this fact, senators should be chosen from the pool of each college's government or should be placed on the executive board of each college government. This would ensure that all senators are fully integrated with their college governments and thus are more privy to the concerns of students at their colleges. The simple fact is that college governments are better connected to the students, and the SA needs to capitalize on this fact by ensuring that all elected SA members are truly integrated with their colleges' governments. 

The SA also needs to focus on acquiring and demonstrating the backing of students on issues it is tackling; it would be exceedingly difficult for the administration to ignore a problem in the face of the entire undergraduate population. If the SA can further its efforts to really be a liaison between the student body and the administration, which often has the power to solve the problems students face, much more will be achieved. 

Whether or not the SA decides to implement these specific suggestions, we hope the implications of the RSAT proposal prompt the SA's leaders to seek out the opinions of the entire student body on how the SA should function by going to the student body, not just by sending out another survey or asking about it at an SA meeting. 

Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the Thresher editorial staff. All other opinion pieces represent solely the opinion of the piece's author. 

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