THERE are too many groups on Grounds that claim to represent the University but don't actually do it.
I'm not talking about CIOs, even though they branch off with such specificity they might as well have the Organization for People from Djibouti Who Like to Watch Alf Re-runs. Although CIOs may consist of infinitely small groups of people, they're only trying to provide outlets to share certain interests. They usually make no claim to represent the interests of the University as a whole.
There is a group of people on Grounds that is supposed to represent the University in its entirety and doesn't. If you're thinking of Student Council, you're getting warm. If you're thinking about the Legislative Affairs Committee of Student Council, you're burning up.
The students who are still chanting the tired mantra about how Council doesn't do anything need to check themselves. I'm not sure what Council could to do to please students, falling short of coming to their houses and cleaning up their rooms. Council has been making some visible, practical changes around the University, from getting Clemons to stay open 24 hours to having voter registration drives. They've made proposals to build a new student center, and are considering forming a group to study the living wage debate. Last week they created a task force to seriously examine the "Not Gay" cheer, which seems like a small and stale issue, but in reality is a controversial one that repeatedly begs to be addressed.
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Overall, these students have been making some genuine strides towards activism, involvement and awareness, and are slowly but surely placing their fingers on the pulse of this University. But Council is far from perfect, and their Legislative Affairs Committee is a prime example of how much they need to do before they really represent the students who elect them.
We, Council included, constantly moan for the school to renovate a building or start a program. But these things need money, and the University doesn't have a bottomless treasury or even complete control of all of its purse strings. Instead, the General Assembly that meets in Richmond is in charge of allocating funds to public schools, and although they can't be "lobbied" per say, they can receive input about how our University can benefit from more money.
This is where Legislative Affairs comes in. At a school that pats itself so proudly on the back for giving students self-governance, we should be ashamed that our Council is not actually using this so-called privilege. The Committee is in charge of handling student's legislative concerns on Grounds. The Committee is supposed to be the face of our University - its members are the students who are vested with our faith to go to Richmond and efficiently pursue funding if we need it. They have the potential to voice the complaints of thousands of students, yet so far, they've just sat back quietly and pretended that this isn't their job.
"I think that in the past, the Committee's potential has gone unfulfilled," said third-year College student Nick Jabbour, the Committee's chairman. "A lot of members wanted to conduct polls to know what students' legislative concerns are, so we can really push a specific student agenda when we try and vie for funds."
The point is that the Committee shouldn't wait to try to gather "students' concerns for legislation." They should know by now, without us spelling it out, what our implicit deficiencies are. Just like Council as a whole has begun to open its bleary eyes to the University's needs, the Committee must start formulating an agenda on their own and begin pushing it in Richmond right away.
There are some glaring places where the school can use money, ones that most students can rattle off. We need money for a summer program for underprivileged high school students, because it's a better idea than affirmative action. We need money to hire more professors in certain departments such as Economics and Government and Foreign Affairs, where demand is exceeding supply. We can use money for building repairs, increased employee wages, up-to-date science and engineering equipment and better medical school research facilities.
Being unsure of our needs is a sorry excuse for making limited attempts to secure money. Rather than spending their time embarrassing themselves by misallocating funds like they did with the Hindu Students Council, Student Council needs to use its Legislative Affairs Committee to receive funds for the whole school. We must demand that the Committee rouse from its slumber, because unlike the Virginia Club for People Who Don't Know How to Wink-genre of CIOs, the Committee has the potential to really do something for the school and represent all students' interests. If they continue to ignore this responsibility, then maybe we should find another way to demand the money we always say we need.
(Diya Gullapalli is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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