There is a basic desire by most citizens in this society to participate in a democratic system. Down from federal, to state, to municipal, everyone tries to have their hand in some form of government. If you can afford it and you have a campaign to stand behind, then you can run for office. Minus the monetary aspect, this process and election model is emulated here at our university. Our Student Government Association, or SGA, is a perfect example of a small-scale governing body.
With our newly appointed President, Matt Vekakis heading this student political body, he will be scrutinized for every move and mistake that he may or may not make. If these mistakes are made, there’s a lot riding on them. They have a budget of over $600,000 under their control and it’s hard for a group of empowered individuals not to think that this money is somehow theirs. While they are simply the allocators, it’s easy to see how this can happen.
Of that roughly $600,000 our clubs are allocated about $430,000, according to Vekakis. Even spread out over two semesters, that’s a lot of financial responsibility. The issue that arises with this, is that one could take advantage of this for their own gain. Currently, there are no rules in our student government that prevent club leaders to be SGA senators.
If a senator would like to motion for a larger budget for their club, they can do so. This hardly seems reasonable. There is an underlying, and for some reason, completely accepted, opinion that anyone can and should run for an SGA office seat. There are no limits or restrictions to who is allowed to run. We try to mirror the U.S. Government’s political models in our SGA, but yet we don’t acknowledge the fact that not all are allowed to run for office in our society. There are limits as to who can run, and for good reason.
At the state level, one must live in the state for several years before being allowed to run for anything. We have restrictions throughout the state and federal level, and yet it doesn’t seem permissible at this university to block someone from running for office in the SGA. There simply must be a conflict of interest law which will prevents someone from being a governing member of a club and also being on the senate.
To continue on this path that we are currently on will promote an environment that is conducive corruption. The goal of the SGA is provide students the opportunity to voice their opinion and to make decisions on what is done for the students at this university. To allow some to take advantage of this system would undermine it and ultimately make it useless. There are those who want to use it as a means to make decisions and allocate funds fairly, but they cannot be the minority.
Just as in our government, our laws must be reexamined regularly. The great thing about democracy is the ability and room for change. We need to think of our SGA like this and make sure that the decisions we are making now, or not making, don’t take away from the ones we can make down the line.