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Printer-Friendly ModeCampus leaders best represent whole when students speak up
The Vanguard Vision
October 12, 2009 —
Complaining about things is something that no one is really immune to (although some of us do it a bit more than others). In the same sense, we are also not immune to taking active steps to solve a problem or fight for a solution to one. Yet, given the choice, some of us will wait for someone else to scratch items off our wish lists, because the thing about complaining is it requires less effort than penning a letter to a state senator or showing up at a committee meeting, and a lot of us do lead busy lives.
We can all think of at least a few changes we would like to see made at the University. The problem is that we sometimes focus too heavily on complaining about what someone else isn’t doing rather than taking action ourselves.
Every year at SVSU, someone will say that the Student Association and Program Board aren’t spending our tuition dollars in the best way (both organizations allocate tens of thousands of dollars to student activities each year).
We might ask if they are doing enough to reach out to us, but realistically, we would get more accomplished if we went to them.
Both hold meetings that are open to the public. Their members are generally people who are accessible to the students, but their meetings are largely unattended by non-members. We might get in the habit of complaining to a friend about not seeing the kinds of activities on campus that we would prefer. What we should do more often is redirect these comments to the people who can actually do something about it.
It’s not to say that there aren’t students who do make their way around campus, attending meetings, voicing concerns and tossing out suggestions. There are students and members of RSOs who make it a priority to contact student leaders or check out their meetings.
But in order to have a group of students that really represents all 10,000 plus of us, more student input is required.
It’s a fair assessment, however, that some students just don’t care. There are those who make a beeline for their vehicles after class and don’t mind one way or another how their contribution to the General Fund is spent. And that’s fine. There aren’t 10,000 seats available at Student Association meetings anyway.
But should more of us care? It wouldn’t hurt. We have a lot of money pooled together between SA and Program Board. These funds enable us to do things as a unified group of college students — things that wouldn’t come together otherwise. If we want to see fewer guest deejays or inflatable structures to race each other on and more guest speakers or sponsored trips to rallies at the state Capitol, all we have to do is open our mouths. The same goes for if we really love our inflatables.
Some will argue that the funds SA and Program Board allocate are better off staying in our pockets in the first place. If that’s what most students want, they are free to pursue actions that would make this happen. But right now, for this academic year, we’ve got some money to spend.
Ten thousand people are bound to disagree on who we should bring to campus or where we should travel together, but right now there is a great opportunity for those who care how we spend these funds to see that it goes toward something they deem worthwhile. Only by speaking up will we let campus leaders know who we want to make checks out to.