Brown: SGB must make students want to care

Well, Charlie Shull won the Student Government Board presidential election. So what’s… Well, Charlie Shull won the Student Government Board presidential election. So what’s next?

Some columnists, myself included, have had a field day ripping apart SGB’s credibility this year — and our criticism has been warranted.

From an audience member’s perspective on a typical Tuesday night, SGB feels like a distant, cold organization. Current president Kevin Morrison has turned meetings into exercises of ruthless efficiency, seeing how quickly the board can plow through its agenda. No wonder students have become apathetic toward campus politics.

In welcoming Shull and his eight board members into their new roles next semester, I say this: It’s going to take more than a paperless allocations process to generate any faith in SGB.

Recently, Morrison said, “I believe organizations are a reflection of their leadership.” While it would be easy to put the blame for a lousy student government solely on Morrison this term, that wouldn’t be realistic.

Board member Nila Devanath said SGB’s real weaknesses came from the board as a whole and its structure.

“There aren’t a lot of students who get fired up and go against the grain,” she said. “The type of people who run for SGB typically give up when things get tough.”

Devanath has left her legacy in SGB by standing up for her beliefs in spite of opposition. She was the only member to actively and publicly engage in dialogue with irate students after the G-20 Summit, and she’s stuck toward working on some projects for up to two years, sifting through administrative bureaucracy.

If more SGB members shared her ardor, perhaps SGB’s integrity wouldn’t even be in question. But they don’t. And it is.

The structure of SGB — with an eight-member board and a president — leaves much to be desired, too. Because of the small number of members and a slate system where candidates run together, board members are often too like-minded to see outside of their respective vantage points.

While it was a prominent theme of this election, I have to wonder how accessible this board will be when four of nine new members kept their Facebook profiles on private during the race.

In the past, candidates have always worked toward showing some semblance of personability through social networking.

Even though I’ve never had any inclination to go to my brothers’ alma mater, I think Ohio State’s student government system makes far more sense than ours. Composed of a 42-member student senate, including the president and vice president, members are elected from dorms and neighborhoods across campus, as well as in at-large positions.

With such a system, student leaders have more ability to reach out to help on campus and in their individual neighborhoods, even going so far as to lobby the city of Columbus. Ohio, for $958,000 worth of new street lights for off-campus safety. And with a senate, it’s harder for students to feel disenfranchised because of a lack of inroads to student government members.

At Carnegie Mellon, they have a similar student senate arrangement. According to Devanath, their university president — CMU’s equivalent to Chancellor Nordenberg — regularly attends their meetings to ask what he can do to help students. To gain some legitimacy for SGB, it would help if Nordenberg took note that those of us paying his salary would like to see him at student meetings once in a while, too.

Shull said he doesn’t believe the downturn in student participation is a sign of apathy engendered by SGB. I hope he was kidding.

This year has also brought a lack of oversight on the Public Relations and Governmental Relations committees to keep students involved. Both of them have been nonexistent in local elections and on-campus communications.

As this under-publicized election season came, the most motivated minority on campus, Greeks, took 10 out of 12 places on the ballot. Representing about 10 percent of students on campus, Greeks will make up eight of the nine next board members.

But that’s not indicative of the makeup of our student body. To better represent the interests of all students, I challenge the current SGB and its successors to make students want to care. Whether through reform or going door-to-door to survey students, SGB needs to become relevant again.

Whether SGB demonstrates the kind of selflessness and dedication needed to make the government a forum for students again will ultimately gauge the level of its success.

E-mail Jacob at jeb110@pitt.edu.