Student Senate purpose clear, certain areas lack professionalism

Published: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Updated: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 09:01

Being an outsider at student organization meetings can feel like looking through a kaleidoscope. It can seem clustered and even intimidating depending on how you, as a student, look into the organization. Due to my job covering a variety of events and meetings for the Collegian, I have felt this way about so many different groups, but Student Senate, in particular, has presented me with quite a learning curve.

I think more students need to become more intimately aware of who the student senators are and what the group does. Students from different colleges on campus elect these students to be the voting members for the rest of us. These are the students who are supposed to be looked up to and be the leaders of this campus.

It’s hard for me, as an outsider, to simply report on the events that occur in the meetings when so many other conversations occur than those presented on the surface.

The point of this opinion piece is not to diminish what the Student Governing Association does, but to bring to light certain inefficient and problematic areas. The student senators spend many hours working diligently to approve and distribute funds so other student groups can function. They spend time sitting in meetings debating and approving legislation on top of taking part in committee meetings discussing these pieces of legislation in more detail. These students spend many of their days either waking up early or staying up late to make important decisions about funding and other actions that affect the K-State campus. They have the power to make or break the worthy causes that students so passionately dedicate themselves to.

However, despite the group’s dedication, certain actions and incidents downgrade the organization’s level of professionalism and credibility.

Professionalism vanishes when, while waiting for meetings to begin outside of the Big 12 Room in the K-State Student Union, I hear underage student senators and interns talk openly and loudly about getting so drunk that they forgot where they were the past weekend. Other senators patronize student groups whose members don’t understand the inner workings and protocol of Student Senate. I have seen the executive members tell visiting members of organizations to be quiet when trying to clarify a point of information. This is an issue of professionalism, which could use improvement, but there are even more serious problems that affect the decisions senators make.

Unfortunately, misinformation spreads through the Student Senate in their discussions about issues important to K-State and the city of Manhattan. Due to my experience covering SGA, Manhattan City Commission and Manhattan Housing Authority meetings over the last semester, I have been exposed to many sides of local politics. Seeing student senators sit in meetings and research the pieces of legislation they will talk about later that evening is unacceptable. All members of the voting body should be well-versed and well-informed about the pieces of legislation before the meeting commences.

One example that particularly bothered me was the Senate’s discussion of the city commission’s Fake Patty’s Day work session during the fall 2011 semester, which was a hot topic for both the Manhattan and K-State communities. However, when the Senate shared information from the work session with the student body, a student senator inaccurately reported certain facts. The senator left out the key point that overcrowding in bars poses a major safety hazard, especially in the event of a fire.

This also occurred after the city commission’s work session on the topic of funding social services. Students in SGA made a resolution supporting the continued funding for the social services agencies of the city of Manhattan, but the SGA members who composed the resolution were unable to explain to the Senate how the agencies would be affected.

I have also seen student senators, who should already have been prepared, scrambling to research legislation for 20 minutes before discussions, then switching back to ESPN to check game scores. Incidents like this happen in nearly every meeting I have covered. I don’t understand how this is acceptable behavior for student senators, who should be more focused on the issues they are elected to know about.

Even though Student Senate is a productive body, there are still certain areas that require improvement, including members’ respect toward student groups and their overall professionalism and organization within meetings. All members of Student Senate should be held to a higher standard than other students due to their participation in this student organization, which has the power to fund, or not to fund, important student groups. That standard should not be abandoned upon leaving the Big 12 Room every Thursday night.