The university suffered a great setback Oct. 13. University senators aiming to protect the integrity of our democratic shared governance were outnumbered in an attempt to make individual senator votes accessible to the public. This means that some of your representatives serving on the very body designed to encapsulate shared governance and transparency within administrative decisions voted against making themselves accountable to you — the people they were elected to represent. As undergraduate students at this university and as senators, we refuse to stand by an institution that rejects the core values it claims to uphold.
Initially, the Senate Executive Committee set forth a motion to change voting procedures. The University Senate uses clickers, like the ones used in lecture classes, to submit votes — a procedure that is entirely anonymous. The only data anyone can glean is the final result of the vote. The SEC’s motion stipulated that in addition to voting with clickers, individual senators must raise their hands to signify if they voted for, against or abstained from a motion or proposal. Unfortunately, the hand-raising would merely be symbolic, not official, adding to the pretense of accountability. Senators may very well raise their hand in favor of a proposal, then vote “no” with their clickers. In addition, there is no consequence for senators who do not raise their hands, as they can still vote by clicker.
The Undergraduate Student Caucus motioned for an amendment to the SEC’s proposal that would register clickers to individual senators and provide access to voting records online. Curiously, this amendment passed, but when it came time to vote on the SEC’s entire motion with our amendment attached, it failed. We wonder if anyone would have voted against transparency if individual votes for this proposal were made public.
As members of the university community, we strongly believe that the most influential decision-making body on the campus — the senate — should act with transparency and accountability. Concerns were raised over whether senators would feel threatened by their superiors if they voted against something their bosses supported. While we are sympathetic, the job of a university senator comes with the responsibility of acting on behalf of the constituents who elected them. If certain senators have personal conflicts of interest that prevent them from participating in an open democratic process, they do not belong in the senate. If people are afraid to stand up for the common good in the face of fear, what progress can we hope to make at the university? If U.S. Congress were to make voting procedures anonymous so senators and representatives could vote without fear of offending their party or lobbyists and then claimed such actions in the name of accountability and transparency, people would vote them out of office.
This is not the system we use simply because, intuitively, transparency does not stem from secrecy, no matter how much external pressure may be applied on our voting representatives. By accepting the position, university senators must be prepared for the associated repercussions.
This is your university — make sure your representatives listen to your voice. Contact your senators to urge them to support revisions to the voting procedure. You can find contact information at www.senate.umd.edu/senators.
Irina Alexander, Lisa Crisalli and Kaiyi Xie are undergraduate university senators. They can be reached at irinalex at umd dot edu, lcrisall at umd dot edu and kxie at umd dot edu, respectively.
