Introduction to the SGA Nomenklatura: The Senate Leadership Council

For those with any experience with the Student Government Association at our university, one of the most salient points that one comes away with is the extremely insular nature of the institution. Despite being elected by the student body, the student senate is no exception to this malady. For all the talk of wanting to “reach out to” students to “engage” them, there are mechanisms in place to defeat any attempt at opening the institution outside the SGA family. One of the most odious of these is the Senate Leadership Council, senate’s own means of creating its own poor man’s attempt at emulating the soviet nomeklatura.

On paper the SLC is a mentorship program, meant to initiate people into senate with mentors and via assigning the mentored students with duties to teach them how senate is to work. The SLC program is outlined in Senate Rule IX, which can be viewed here http://bit.ly/gw9TQ2. The SLC is a selective membership organization overseen by the legislative assistant, and limits its membership according to the decision of the aforementioned assistant and the ad-hoc committee that oversees it. If you think that this sounds an awful lot like a fraternity, you wouldn’t be the only one with that perception. Members of senate (largely fraternal in background) have a hard time discerning between the two. There are constant jokes relating SLC members to pledges, and even an incident in which the speaker of the senate almost referred to these members as “littles” on the senate floor (a fraternal term for a mentored person who is referred to as a little brother or sister).

Beyond the attempt to instill a fraternity within a legislature meant to represent 90% of the student body that isn’t involved in “Greek life”, is the more dubious purpose of SLC. The Senate Leadership Council acts as means to stifle opposition to the senate majority by replacing retiring senators with yes-men handpicked by senate leaders. More than five members appointed to the 43^rd senate alone hail from the SLC, representing the majority of the replacements confirmed by senate. Despite their lack of experience, understanding of governance, goals, and actual approval by the student body, these students are consistently rubber stamped into senate seats.

In contrast, when former student senator, chair, and presidential candidate Austin Smith was up for appointment he was rejected by the senate. Despite the fact that Mr. Smith had ran for one of the then 5 empty graduate senate seats unfilled at the end of the election (now six empty graduate college seats). By all rights Mr. Smith and the other graduate candidates should have been placed in one of those many empty seats when there were no other contenders for them at the end of the fall ‘10 election session. However, he was rejected in a noxious display of hypocrisy when notoriously corrupt senator Jeremy Pozin argued that Mr. Smith’s political campaigns with the Students for a Democratic Society were too radical for him to be considered a viable appointment. This was in blatant violation of statute IX, 1101.13 which requires that senate pick appointments on qualification rather than political ideology (see: http://bit.ly/i4KaeO). Not to mention this was in addition to Pozin’s own drunken escapades while in an official SGA capacity. Mr. Smith was unable to break the two-thirds threshold for appointments, displaying the priority of a senate more concerned with fraternal allegiance and personal politics than in representing the students.

There have been suggestions in the past emanating from the progressive wing of Senate that SLC should be opened up to all students by eliminating the arbitrary cut off and selective membership procedures. These very reasonable calls to modify SLC have been answered by the inane concern that without the limit SLC would be unable to pay for all the polo’s and informational folders which were (laughably) considered critical for the functioning of the organization. The calls for such reform were dropped as many progressive senators left in disgust with the current senate and were replaced with SLC “littles”.

The current Senate Leadership Council is an abomination, and should be immediately reformed or discontinued. In its current form it serves as a blatant means of maintaining a political pH that is in line with the senate leadership’s views and its fraternal nature, rather than the actual views of the student body. There is no logical reason why a senate so supposedly hungry for student involvement would go to such lengths to restrict membership in an organization meant to model future student leaders. It’s time to call for the end of the SGA’s petty nomenklatura.