Editorial: SGB at pivotal crossroads

A s Pitt continues to cope with the G-20 Summit aftermath, Student Government Board is… A s Pitt continues to cope with the G-20 Summit aftermath, Student Government Board is attempting to negotiate students’ G-20-related concerns.

At Tuesday’s SGB meeting, board members Lance Bonner and Charlie Shull introduced a resolution aimed at resolving G-20 apprehensions and supporting students who were arrested amid the mayhem.

The resolution said the board will “support all law-abiding students who … were arrested and charged with crimes that they did not commit,” “aid the University administration in identifying those students whose actions during the G-20 Summit violated the Student Code of Conduct” and “continue to work with the University administration to inform the students of the reasoning for specific police action in the Oakland community during the G-20 Summit.”

The resolution also pledged to repair the relationship between students and the city of Pittsburgh.

These intentions sound nice, but they’re too vague and might have come too late.

Board member Nila Devanath took issue with this vagueness, saying there was an earlier draft of the resolution that was more specific.

“Put some ideas into the resolution so students reading the resolution would know what ‘working on’ means,” she said at the meeting.

It’s been two weeks since the G-20, and it’ll be three weeks by the time the resolution is passed. Students have court dates approaching, and they need help now.

Granted, there’s more to the resolution than just helping accused students, but that issue, by far, is the most important and the most pressing. As per custom, the resolution is tabled until next week’s meeting.

Before then, SGB should move the resolution out of the realm of ambiguity and into concreteness.

Shull, who co-introduced the resolution, said that the wording of the resolution “allows for the students to say what they want instead of just the board saying this what we’re going to do.”

“We don’t want to say ‘I did one, two and three, and now you’re off on your own,’” he said.

Shull said SGB might hold a town hall meeting for students and student leaders in order to hear their concerns. As the board remains undecided on this plan, students’ court dates quickly approach, and some people arrested during the G-20 have already gone to trial.

We respect Shull’s efforts to listen to students, but the board should have accomplished that during these past two weeks.

The board has been making an effort since the end of the G-20, including meeting with Pitt officials to discuss students’ actions, or lack thereof.

But the notoriously slow legal system seems to be moving faster than the board right now, which would be ironic if the futures of so many students weren’t at stake.

A more specific resolution could create more accountability for the board, which could hasten its progress.

Any politician can tell you, it hurts your image when you say you’ll do something and then don’t come through.

Perhaps this mentality prompted the resolution’s vagueness, Devanath said.

“Sometimes, some of the board sees the rest of the student body as judgmental,” she said. “They’re afraid students will punish them, even if they tried their best and failed.”

SGB should produce a list of more tangible goals it hopes to fulfill. Maybe the board won’t achieve all of them, but it’ll still provide a distinctive list of transparent actions to the students it serves.

Not every student will agree with all of the goals — and some might even complain if SGB doesn’t fully achieve them — but SGB needs to use its influence to advocate for its student body, and it needs to do so now.

Perhaps the most common complaint about SGB is its perceived irrelevance to the average Pitt student. We see this, for example, in the perennially low voter turnout for the board’s elections.

This is an opportunity for SGB to truly become the voice of its student body, an opportunity we hope SGB will embrace.