Every once and a while I have a quick chat with Eric May where he reassures me that his administration is doing everything in their power to be the voice of the students, etcetera; but a little while back, he mentioned something I hadn’t quite expected, and frankly, it threw me off a bit. Eric said that, besides establishing a “student relations” department, his campaign hadn’t made any promises. Now, to be fair, they did “create” that department, but only if changing the Marketing Department’s title counts as creating a new department (it doesn’t). But regardless, I think his claim is both misguided and misleading—surely they had made promises throughout the campaign.
I was pretty sure he was wrong on this one, but maybe I was mistaken, so I looked through my files and pulled out the campaign’s marketing materials (which, under full disclosure, I designed on behalf of the campaign).
Here is the full quote from their main promotional poster:
“Our mission is to develop a professional organization that accurately represents and reflects the needs of the student body. We will ignite reform by exceeding traditional boundaries, and eliminating the politics within BSG. Members of our administration will be held to the highest standards of responsibility and accountability. We will derive our motivation from the students we serve and ensure that your mandatory fee is used to maximize your college experience.”
Now in reading this quote, what was termed the administration’s mission throughout the campaign, it seems fairly obvious that Eric is forgetting some key points of his campaign. Surely, “will ignite reform,” “will be held,” “will derive,” and “ensure that your” are the beginnings of statements which promise some specific action; and even if the word “promise” was never used, surely it was implied. The very definition of the word “promise” is (at least according to one dictionary), “a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something.” It seems almost too straightforward to miss.
All in all, I think we can outline a four “promises” which the campaign made throughout the month or so of talks, debates, and petitioning that preceded the election. First, they promised to “ignite reform by exceeding traditional boundaries, and eliminating the politics within BSG,” secondly, they promised to “be held to the highest standards of responsibility and accountability,” thirdly, they promised to “derive our motivation from the students we serve,” and finally, they promised to “ensure that your mandatory fee is used to maximize your college experience.” That is four promises Mr. May, a number infinitely times more than the “none” you seem to remember.
Now, while we’re on the subject, let’s discuss how many of these promises (notice the lack of quotation marks) this administration has kept as we finish up the Fall Semester. I am willing to give them a pass on the third and fourth promises; not because I think they have been fulfilled, but because there currently is no metric to define what it means to be deriving ones motivation from the students or how we might measure how effective their spending has been thus far. And, as of this moment, I don’t see any proof that either Eric, Michelle, or Kyle are championing only those programs that they personally want to be involved in, so I will not argue that they are misusing money for their own benefit (at least not yet). What I will say, however, is that certainly they have not ignited reform, eliminated the politics within BSG, or have held themselves accountable or allowed the appropriate governmental checks to do so.
That last statement, that they have not fulfilled their second promise of “[being] held to the highest standards of responsibility and accountability,” is a little hard to establish, but I think that the fact that people like myself are being forced to act as a check on the administration is an obvious result of there not being that internal accountability in the first place. Further, from my past experience within BSG, I know that there is very little balance in power within the student government and I doubt that has changed within this new administration. With that said, I leave it open for debate, I could be wrong or simply blind to the issue altogether. I’ll leave it there.
The first promise is the one I find most obviously broken, with little likeliness that it can or will be fixed before this administration’s term is up. If you want evidence, take a look at the number of people who have been forced out of BSG or have resigned from their posts (both within the executive and on the Board). Or, just read the quote given in the most recent issue of The Stylus by Nick Morticelli, a former on-campus representative who recently resigned from his post.
“I did enjoy my time as an on-campus representative. Although I would have loved to work together and accomplish things quickly and effectively as a board I soon realized that that was not possible, especially with a true division in the board. I often wondered why we didn’t work together instead of constantly arguing with each other.”
Here we have an elected member of the Board of Directors who is willing to say that the politics within BSG are very much intact and are keeping BSG from effectively supporting and representing students. Surely this is a violation of this administration’s promise to “ignite reform by exceeding traditional boundaries and eliminating the politics within BSG.”
My issue is that this promise, the one most obviously broken by the administration, is the one that has the biggest effect on how well BSG is run and to what extent the student government actually does represent students. Politics are important in BSG because they allow the representatives to best represent their constituencies, but when people start resigning because of the stalemates created by the internal politics—that is when we know there is a problem. Government’s effectiveness is directly related to how well people work together, and when they stop working together it hurts all of us. Further, it is the job of the executive team, especially Vice President Michelle Paul as the Board Chair, to bring people together and not allow the internal conflict between parties to stop the progress of student government. This is an issue Ms. Paul is responsible for fixing and if she doesn’t then it is our responsibility, as mandatory fee paying students, to speak out in protest.
