EDITORIAL: Unicameral SGA brings heated opposition
The Student Government Association's proposal to move to a unicameral system composed entirely of elected senators faced heated opposition from registered student organizations at a meeting Monday night.
The sudden arrival of the RSOs to voice their dissent against a proposal created largely in response to inactivity and poor attendance by SGA representatives was a bizarre, kind of self-incriminating hypocrisy, but it's one well-known to many governing bodies.
Their vocal arrival is little different from the normally-stale school board meetings that suddenly explode with participation the minute budget cuts make the agenda, or city council meetings packed with citizens because of a proposed ordinance.
Or the typical college student, apathetic of the political process until an issue comes to the forefront that they become interested in.
Everyone, no matter their varying degrees of interest, deserves an opportunity — a forum — to let their voice be heard. Whether the SGA decides to listen is another story, but a fierce opposition to a proposal should at least be considered.
Toeing the line between mob rule and an oligarchy is a problem which has plagued representative democracies since their first inception. So simply doing away with more than half of campus' representatives is going to cause some understandable backlash — despite however much representing those representatives actually do.
The problem simply is not that easy to fix.
The self-interest betrayed by the swollen attendance could be damning, but if anything, it reveals something more complicated. If RSOs only show interest in the goings on at SGA when they are facing an existential threat, then how can we expect a unicameral Senate to avoid making self-preservation its primary goal?
It's all gotten a bit cliquey, really.
How can we, or the E-Board of SGA, say for sure what course is best for student government? Fittingly, the issue will be placed on the general election ballots. Let's hope students with an interest in the fight remember their voices then.
