Howard: SGB in dire need of reform

This year’s Student Government Board elections aren’t so much about the candidates and their… This year’s Student Government Board elections aren’t so much about the candidates and their platforms. Instead, they showcase the faults inherent in SGB’s workings.

While the candidates themselves all seem relatively competent and have some decent ideas to improve SGB, none of them have proposed the sweeping reforms necessary to fix the seriously flawed governmental body.

One of the most pressing issues not addressed by the SGB candidates is the lack of student involvement in SGB — to the point where only 13 candidates are running for nine positions, with four of these candidates entering the race just a week before election day.

Presidential candidates Justin Romeo and Charlie Shull both proposed new ways to increase student organization contact with SGB members, but, by identifying student organizations as their only constituency, both presidential candidates are simply perpetuating the problem.

The problem is that SGB is largely perceived as one big allocations board thats only tangible purpose is to dole out money to student groups. By failing to meaningfully tackle major problems on campus like the rights of students in the aftermath of the G-20 Summit or the debate surrounding the proposed “Fair Share Tax,” SGB marginalized itself and reinforced its image as a jumped-up allocations board.

Even SGB’s allocations functions isolate it from the student body, because the allocations procedures are something that few outside of those in student organization leadership positions, The Pitt News and SGB itself actually understand. Even if an individual student did take an interest in the allocations process and fully understood the procedure, he wouldn’t be able to participate in the process because allocations recommendations are made behind closed doors and are voted on in weekly meetings without any public input.

Increasingly isolated with little student interest in the election and no student input in SGB’s weekly business, SGB faces a crisis of legitimacy in tomorrow’s election, with turnout almost guaranteed to be lower than last year.

Contributing to its flawed image is the fact that candidates were required to sign a statement this year waiving their “right to contest the 2009 Student Government Board Election results due to technological inaccuracies due to either software, hardware or human error.”

Shull said that such a waiver helps to keep the electoral process moving and that candidates simply need to have faith in the system. While Shull sees the waiver as an expedient, Romeo said that it was a suspect addition to this year’s race.

But it isn’t just the waiver that taints this year’s election. Rather, it’s the serious miscommunication that plagued the entry of late candidates that undermines my faith in the SGB electoral system.

For instance, in my column last week, current SGB president Kevin Morrison said that late candidates had to be approved by Wednesday Nov. 11 at noon. But on Nov. 8, elections committee chairwoman Sarah Heisey sent out an e-mail to prospective late candidates telling them that the deadline for late entry was actually Tuesday Nov. 10 at noon “due to restrictions with Computing Services.”

At least one prospective candidate didn’t get this e-mail and instead turned his application material on the original Wednesday deadline. The student was told that he had missed the correct deadline and would be unable to run.

That SGB would fail to communicate properly with a prospective candidate and then penalize that student for its mistake raises serious questions about the internal workings of SGB. Because of this particular failure, students have one less candidate to choose from in tomorrow’s elections and the field is narrower than it could have been.

These issues taken together raise serious questions about the legitimacy and efficacy of SGB as an institution. The lack of competition or campaigning, the serious miscommunication that cost one student his participation in the race as well as the suspect waiver that costs candidates their right to contest the election results are serious issues that SGB needs to address.

Because such flaws have emerged, SGB candidates need to think beyond new initiatives to go paperless or improve the school’s green image and come up with ways to seriously reform SGB. No matter what, it is clear that SGB can’t continue to function as it does today and still discharge its duties to the student body.

We deserve an SGB engaged with the problems of the student body. We need serious internal reforms of the student government.

Continue the conversation at Giles’s blog, http://www.gilesbhoward.com/blog/ or e-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.