The events of the Senate on Sept. 30 resulted in significant reconsiderations of the role and function of ASWC on Whitman campus.  

Unrelated to the repercussions of that meeting, but nonetheless notable with regards to the future of ASWC, former President of ASWC Lily Parker announced her decision to take a leave of absence for the rest of the semester. During a Senate meeting on Oct. 28, ASWC discussed restructuring possibilities and ultimately elected Gautam Produturi to act as interim Facilitator during the time that Parker will be absent from ASWC.

The past few weeks have been tumultuous for the student government. Beyond the departure of the President, other members of ASWC have started to critically reflect on their roles within this body. Sophomore Ari Louie resigned from her position as Senator following the Sept. 30 meeting, announcing her decision via a post on the Whitman Class of 2021 Facebook page.

Louie’s feelings toward ASWC’s function on campus contributed to her decision to resign — she cites deeply rooted issues within ASWC as the source of her frustration.

“I realized that I am doing nothing for my constituents and nothing for myself in my role as a senator … No matter how vocal I am, ASWC is not set up in any way that allows my voice (and therefore the voices of my constituents) to be considered and reflected in the actions taken by ASWC,” Louie said in her post.

Louie reflected many of the sentiments shared by students outside of ASWC after Sept. 30 as she expressed her dissatisfaction with the current role of Whitman student government.

“My job was not actually to help people become leaders and changemakers,” Louie said. “[In] reality, my job was to teach new senators how to be complicit parts of a broken, fundamentally non-inclusive, non-equitable system.”

It has been made clear, not only by Louie but others within the community, that change within ASWC is imperative. The email sent out by ASWC to the Whitman community on Oct. 29 acknowledged this need, stating that “ASWC will be changing on a fundamental level in the very near future.”

Senior Gautam Produturi, now acting as ASWC’s interim Facilitator, reflects on the larger questions that members of ASWC have neglected to ask themselves thus far.

“I think there’s a very real question of what ASWC actually does on this campus,” Produturi said. “In all honesty, we haven’t put a lot of thought into the ‘why’ of [our actions] … [So] I think it’s a good idea to reevaluate and think about what we’re doing here, [and] what each person’s role is in the greater structure of ASWC.”

Produturi’s role as “interim Facilitator” will encompass many of Parker’s responsibilities as ASWC President, but with more of a focus on altering ASWC’s capacity on campus.

“Change needs to happen before we get into the next semester, and God forbid we just be stagnant for the rest of the year,” Produturi said. “We’re picking up the slack wherever we can, really, and part of that is starting to make steps towards a different view of ASWC and what that might look like.”

Leann Adams, Director of Student Activities and advisor to ASWC, takes an optimistic view with regards to the effects of the meeting on Sept. 30 on the student government.

“The impact of having this ‘firecracker’ moment … has the potential to be very good for the student body in that ASWC cannot continue in the status quo; they can’t ignore that there are things that their constituents are demanding of them, appropriately so, to make change [in] the organization, and to do better work, and to do more effective representative work,” Adams said.

Adams also recognizes the deeply disturbing qualities presented by the events of Sept. 30.

“There’s a ripple effect for those kinds of moments in dramatic and significant ways, where the student body might lose trust or lose faith or feel excluded from their own representative government,” Adams said. “And that’s problematic in lots of ways.”

While plans for the future are still unclear, ASWC is considering making some drastic changes.

“I envision a pretty big reimagining of ASWC in the next few weeks, whether that involves disbanding it altogether and going with a student union, whether that involves keeping the structure but changing some salient aspects of it, I couldn’t tell you,” Produturi said.

More targeted conversations have been held within ASWC about restructuring the current role of the President as well.

“Instead of having one President and a number of Vice Presidents, [we would] just have [a] counsel of VPs that makes decisions and divides responsibilities among themselves equally,” Produturi said. “Keeping the President is … another [option].”

Regardless of the details, members of ASWC are eager to press forward and align the function of the student government with their values.

“I’ve seen ASWC engaging in lots of conversations that have involved lots of pockets of different people that have been both reflective and forward-looking,” Adams said. “[They’re] trying to understand what has happened and what is going to happen in order to inform what they would like to do differently down the road.”

Senior Rajesh Narayan, who attended the open Senate conversation on Oct. 28, has mixed feelings about these changes within ASWC. Narayan is not affiliated with ASWC, but expressed strong feelings about the necessity of cohesion within ASWC in order to effectively serve the student body.

“I’m kind of torn between two things: the first is, if you have to [mess] up to learn… it’s like, where are [you] going? Are you going to keep making mistakes and that’s the only way you’re going to get better?” Narayan said. “[But at the same time] I think acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step to solving it, and… they knew they [messed] up.”

This recognition is just the first step to greater adjustment within ASWC. As Adams put it, “Change is a process. Change takes a lot of work.”

The struggle to reinvent the organization has begun and will take time to achieve completely. Produturi emphasizes the uncertainty of the logistics of these changes in their beginning stages, but perhaps more importantly, the inevitability of them.

“ASWC is going to change. I can’t tell you how, I can’t tell you when… But it will be,” he said.