While reading the two responses to my Feb. 3 column, “The SGA: Real leadership wanted,” I was struck by a terrible fear. Had I suggested that the Student Government Association president should concern himself mainly with spitting in university President Dan Mote’s coffee or talking about Provost Nariman Farvardin’s mother? Did I accidentally propose that the SGA lead a mob to burn the administration building to the ground and rename the school The Students’ Republic of the University of Maryland? When I looked back I found that I had not, in fact, suggested doing any of these things. What I had suggested, and what ended up being so offensive, was the idea that the SGA should start using the power it already has.
In Joel Cohen’s Feb. 11 response piece, “Student leadership: Walk soft, carry a big stick,” he compared my vision of the SGA to obstructionist congressional Republicans, refusing to sit down and work through differences. Here’s what Cohen is missing: Students aren’t the minority. We’re not even a small majority; the vast majority of people affected by decisions made by this university are students. This should be self-evident, but apparently it needs some explanation. An example that’s more analogous to our current situation would be if the current Democratic majority won another third of the seats in the Senate and the House and then let Libertarians run the country. That would be a clear misuse of power.
The root of my student-power philosophy is that if students are the ones affected by the decisions, then we should be the ones making the decisions. Since we all have classes to attend and hopefully some learning to do, we need to hire some full-time bureaucrats to run the day-to-day operations of the university. This is how we should use the administration. In SGA Speaker of the Legislature Matt Lyons’ Feb. 4 column, “The right way to lead,” he worries that I think of the administration as enemies of students. Let me be clear: They aren’t our enemies; they’re our employees.
Both Cohen and Lyons argue that a combative SGA wouldn’t have the ear of the administration. The only time a minority can ignore the majority in anything resembling a democratic system is if the majority isn’t well-represented. The administration should be worried that they’re going to fall out of our favor, not the other way around. Instead, what we have now is an SGA that cooks dinner and then begs for table scraps.
Don’t get me wrong; there are many students in the SGA who work tirelessly every day to represent students. Current SGA attempts to protect the Wooded Hillock from development are but one example of SGA members fighting for a better university. These legislators deserve our admiration and need our vocal support.
However, there’s a more fundamental problem. The SGA shouldn’t have to ask the administration very nicely not to destroy the only wildlife space we still have on the campus. They shouldn’t have to go through the work of developing an alternative proposal. They should be able to just tell the administration, “No.”
I don’t have what Lyons called “cliched college contempt for all things political,” but rather I have a cliched college idealism that puts faith in a democratic system. I want an SGA that thinks students, not administrators, should be decision-makers. If Mote disagrees with something we want, fine, let him call the SGA president and ask nicely. The power belongs to us, not them, and it’s time our representatives realize it.
Malcolm Harris is a sophomore English and government and politics major. He can be reached at harrisdbk@gmail.com.
