Brown: Students of the campus, unite!

Many Pitt students are lazy, apathetic and generally selfish crybabies who care nothing about… Many Pitt students are lazy, apathetic and generally selfish crybabies who care nothing about improving this environment we know as college.

If this is the generation of change, I’m worried, especially because college is supposed to be one of the more progressive venues out there. Let’s be honest, Pitt needs some changing.

I sat down with SGB member Nila Devanath for two hours so I could pick her brain on how the politics of how this school really works.

What I found out was rather alarming. Student complaints flow aplenty when it comes to the standard-fare issues like tuition costs and whether we’ll have school during next week’s G-20 Summit. But even for those matters, very few people stand up to rouse a little rabble on any problems outside of forums held by SGB, much less try to figure out solutions. It’s pathetic.

Devanath said that some of the student government members she’s met from across the nation have told her stories in which swarms of students petitioned school policies and walked out of classes. The biggest demonstrations at Pitt are a bunch of Yinzers burning couches after football games.

We have a lot more power to propose ideas and better our campus than people think. SGB isn’t just there to approve organization budgets, and it’s possible to bypass them altogether if you’re not into staying up late on Tuesday nights.

The first step to student-led advocacy is understanding the political hierarchy of the University. Dealing with Pitt is a difficult and bureaucracy-laden process. It’s mind-boggling, but it’s not impossible to figure out.

SGB works within the limited confines granted to it by the Office of Student Life. SGB also has to abide by rules regarding online polling and petitions as Computing Services limits the number of opportunities for SGB to have direct feedback online with students.

Usually, SGB polling is relegated to tabling in Towers lobby for feedback. If you’re an upperclassman without a need to go to Towers, chances are you’ll never know they were there. The weight of any petitions logged for SGB initiatives once again falls under the discretion of Student Life.

Theoretically, if Student Life doesn’t like the petition, tough luck. They can send the proposal to the gallows at will.

But with enough vigor, some initiatives have eked past the Vulcan death grip that is Student Life’s bureaucratic reach. Such was the case with the fall break day that former SGB president Sumter Link started. Even then, Link fought for more than a year before receiving any kind of success with the higher-ups.

Evidenced by the last SGB election, the hardest battle is finding enough students around campus who don’t suffer from chronic apathy. Of the more than 17,000 undergraduates on campus, only 3,876 students voted for an SGB presidential candidate last November.

Of those, just 1,063 people voted for our current president, Kevin Morrison. Morrison is well qualified for the position, but a mere 6.7 percent of eligible undergraduate students voting for him does not instill much confidence in our student body.

Between our infamous riots and Obama-rama last November, we seem to know how to mobilize. But when it comes to our own turf, our student body is about as mum as Jaycee Dugar living out of a tent for 18 years.

For whatever reason, we don’t ask questions here. We don’t challenge policies. We just take whatever is thrown at us sitting down.

But we need to stand up, as Peter Finch did in the 1976 film, “Network,” and yell “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

There’s plenty to be mad about here, from having online tuition payment without online class scheduling to the lack of input students receive when it comes to policy changes like with vehicle rentals from last year.

And it’s easy enough to e-mail complaints with suggestions to the deans, SGB and even government representatives.

Write letters to your friendly campus newspaper. I’d tell everyone to e-mail Chancellor Nordenberg, but he’s rather shy about giving out his e-mail address.

Through Devanath, I had access to Nordenberg’s e-mail address, but I declined on principle. He should be the one to pony it up and list it on his home page or the “find people” portal on Pitt.edu. There are much more accessible college presidents around the country with far larger student bodies to worry about.

Perhaps the best way to reach him is to nail a complaint list to his door in the Cathedral, a la Martin Luther.

Now is the time to end complacency. Between an outdated set of governing rules that obstruct the ability of our student government to accomplish good for students and the general bureaucratic guff we receive, we should be motivated. We should be mad as hell.

But, are we going to take it anymore?

E-mail Jacob at jebrown13@yahoo.com.