Rich Abdill’s April 6 column, “System error,” is poorly researched and has little basis in the facts, but it got me thinking. A properly managed Student Government Association can make a huge difference, as was shown during my administration, but a poorly run SGA can have rational students reconsidering its effectiveness, such as what’s happening this year.
The SGA presidency is more than a full-time job. As president, you do not have the luxury of summer or semester breaks. These are the only times the SGA president has to get to know the individual administrators and department heads at the university and members of the College Park City Council. Both the administration and the city council try to take advantage of the student absence from the campus to sneak through initiatives that are not favorable to students. For example, in the summer after I was elected, I helped stop city ratification of District 3 Councilman Mark Cook’s objection to the proposal to add police protection in the city.
My administration proposed and added the most practical safety enhancements on our campus in years. As a team, we got the university to pave crosswalks by Hillel, a heavy pedestrian area, after a student was struck by a car. Additionally, we pushed for the crosswalk by South Campus Commons 4 crossing Knox Road and paved and added lights to the path behind the Maryland Book Exchange near Fraternity Row. I also kept my campaign promise to create and implement a safety education program, called SafetyUMD, at no cost to the student body.
My administration implemented changes to the SGA structure designed to make the organization significantly more transparent and efficient. We were the first SGA to have a viable and interactive website, the first to broadcast legislative meetings live, the first to allow reporters into finance committee meetings and the first to establish a university-wide listserv. Last year also saw substantial revisions to the SGA bylaws that streamlined legislative work to produce better results for students.
After years of failing to pass the Textbook Affordability Act, it became law last year after my administration created the political urgency to pass the bill over the opposition of the University System of Maryland. Thanks to our hard work, ISBN numbers are released earlier by state mandate so students can shop around for their books, and tighter restrictions are placed on publishers to create more available and cheaper used books. This will have a positive and lasting effect for students for years to come.
In the porn scandal last year, I felt we needed to exert real political pressure on state Sen. Andy Harris (R-Baltimore and Harford) to be sure the university’s funding was never again threatened by the whim of a state legislator, and I expressed my opinion in The Washington Times and other media. Sadly, it happened in the middle of the SGA election. Diamondback columnist and presidential candidate Malcolm Harris turned it into a circus. All he accomplished was attracting members of the press to see a 45-minute segment of a dirty movie and feed his own ego. It did nothing to benefit the student body. Instead of making sure legislators such as Andy Harris had a political consequence, we opened the door for other legislators to use university funding as a way to attract attention to themselves.
A lack of leadership this year has cost the student body untold millions of dollars in fees. This SGA is ineffective, as we saw in the general education plan debate, where not one of the SGA’s recommendations successfully made it into the final plan after its three hours of debate. This SGA has wasted valuable time by allowing witch-hunts, such as my attempted impeachment, to go forward.
Ineffectiveness in the SGA is not systemic; it’s this year’s leadership.
Being president of the SGA is difficult and is a learning experience. In hindsight, I would have done some things differently, but that’s the nature of any learning experience, especially in college.
Jonathan Sachs is a former SGA president endorsing current candidate Andrew Steinberg. He can be reached at jjsachs at umd dot edu.
