Members of the SGA have taken stances on a smattering of academic issues. They’ve proposed a new course on sustainability. They’ve funded an information session on limited enrollment programs. But regardless of these individual efforts, the Student Government Association has failed to express a big-picture agenda. They passed a bill supporting the strategic plan, in part because it “intends to improve the quality of undergraduate education.”
But the strategic plan is only a set of guidelines and goals, and the SGA hasn’t yet developed a vision of how they hope to see the new general education plan implemented. The SGA is the leading body representing undergraduate student interests. It should go without saying that they should be seriously committed to developing a plan to entirely revamp the undergraduate education program, which is the very reason that the SGA’s constituency is here.
This should go without saying, but unfortunately, recent events demand that we say so. Vice President for Academic Affairs Sterling Grimes, who is responsible for this big-picture agenda, said he spends 30 hours a week in meetings with administrators, professors, students and members of the SGA. But in a 30-hour work-week, Grimes hasn’t made the time to meet with Ira Berlin, the chair of the task force restructuring CORE. And we aren’t sure why the SGA hasn’t yet taken a stance on post-tenure review when it’s a policy that stands to benefit undergraduate students by holding tenured professors more responsible for the quality of their teaching. At this point, the ship is about to sail – the University Senate is deciding the issue in two days.
SGA President Jonathan Sachs said he hopes a new proposal to split academic responsibilities between the senior vice president and individual legislators will address these shortcomings. But he’s leading the charge in the wrong direction.
The senior vice president already has an enormous range of responsibilities to contend with, including campus safety, environmentalism and transportation. Throwing academic affairs into the mix will only result in shoddier work across the board. Sachs has justified the change by saying that individual legislators need to take more ownership for the colleges they represent. He’s right that they need to be more aggressive and involved in representing their colleges. But he’s wrong to think that’s justification for the proposed changes.
There needs to be one person leading the charge on academic issues. It’s a complicated morass of questions, from departmental funding to the curriculums of new majors and minors. It demands attention to both administrative and intellectual considerations. Legislators need to feel more responsibility – and one person in charge of academic issues is needed to hold them accountable on a day-to-day basis. We are an educational institution, and it almost seems stupid to spend time talking about how much the quality and content of education defines students’ experience here. With such obvious importance, it’s only right that the entire student body has the opportunity to vote for their representative.
Sachs claims that the proposal to change academic affairs to a cabinet-level position isn’t a demotion, just a reshuffling. But it’s hard to see it that way seriously. A cabinet-level replacement would be appointed by the SGA president, not voted on by students. “It’s not taking away [from students’] direct representation for academics at all,” Sachs said. Maybe it’s just how politicians talk. But when we see a proposal that would remove students’ one chance a year to vote for their academic representative-in-chief, we call it a loss of direct representation.
