The Virginia Informer

Last Updated:4/22/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Alec McKinley Taking the oath: SA members gather in the Wren Chapel for the historic swearing in ceremony of the 317th Student Assembly.

When the newly inaugurated Student Assembly officials stood to sing the Alma Mater to close their inauguration ceremony, it was the first time I had heard the chorus since the close of the Harvard National Model United Nations. Throughout the ceremony, the proceedings reminded me of such closing ceremonies: rich in mutual self-affirmation and pomp and circumstance. Newly inaugurated SA President Sarah Rojas told the Assembly that she wanted the SA to reach a position at which no more negative things would be said about it. Good luck to you. The SA inauguration taught me something, and it will make that goal impossible to achieve.

The Student Assembly is, first and foremost, a club, no different than any other except in authority. Its members are, to use a term from the BBC's political comedy "Yes Minister," completely house-trained by the organizational culture of the Assembly. They are friends, not rivals. The Assembly is not a parliament or legislative house: It has no "loyal opposition" or "minority party." With one exception, Senators are wholehearted members of the club.

Matt Beato, in his closing statement on his life in the SA, said that members should fully cooperate with one another and not bicker because the student body does not like its leaders bickering. That is only partially correct. The student body does not like its leaders stalling progress on the three-person rule by unilaterally leaking the results of negotiations, but it needs a student representative body that will ask hard questions of its members and discern the wisdom of the body's actions. When the SA becomes a common interest club for its members, a sort of "Model Government" without the pesky opposition frontbench, it no longer can be for the "Student."

But is this "Model Government" in our benevolent one-party state is not "model" like the quaint UN simulation I participated in at Harvard. The SA spends real money in the name of all; Model UN or Model Congress is in the end a style of debate tournament. With their oath calling for SA members to "preserve, protect, and defend" the organization's constitution, the members clearly do not see this little club as a "model" anything. It is a Government; a one-party government of (mostly) out-of-state Greeks.

Is it small wonder then that the SA starts all communication with "YOUR" in all-caps? The SA knows it has a problem with its all-corrupting institutional culture, but, as a certain Mr. Pilchen's exploits illustrate, even those who come to cleanse the temple set up their own money-changing table. The SA will not cleanse itself until its members realize that the most important word in "Student Government" is not "model," "government," or "YOUR [sic]," but rather "Student," in all the student body's great variance of opinion and lifestyle.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools