No one ever campaigns for ASWC saying, “I’ll consume a lot of your time if you elect me,” which is a shame, because that’s what most ASWC elected officials are doing.
Do you have four hours of time to spend while being unproductive? Here’s what I was thinking. I could detain you in the Young Ballroom around a giant table with about 75 or so other students. Only about a third of these students will actually care what’s happening: the vast majority of them would be there against their will like you. I would probably bicker with some other people for a while, and then you will have to agree to whatever it is I’ve decided.
I have become convinced that Whitman’s Political Leadership: this isn’t limited to ASWC: needs to learn one thing above all else: People cannot follow leadership that they cannot respect, and they cannot respect that which does not respect them (or their time).
I’m guessing that anyone who has served as a club representative at an ASWC joint session already knows that’s what I’m talking about. There are few mitigating factors for those club reps: for example, most representatives bring homework to work on. A few come to the beginning of the meeting, sign the attendance sheet and then leave somewhere in the middle. The point is this: The joint session, as it stands currently, is a ridiculous waste of time for club representatives. Most people I know here at Whitman can’t afford such waste, and yet ASWC (as a collective) seems satisfied with this situation.
What I’ve outlined is already bad. The really masochistic part is that it doesn’t help the senate at all. Why do we have the joint session if the majority doesn’t want to attend it? Does ASWC empower the House enough to make their meetings significant to the Senate? The answer is an unequivocal “no.” The House has to confirm some decisions made by the Senate, and they confirm appointments to campus media, but aside from that they have relatively few duties. So why carry on the charade? Why are we wasting everyone’s time?
After working with ASWC as much as the club reps do, most people conclude that there is really no justification for this massive allocation of time and resources. Government (even student government), should always strive for efficiency, and it appears to me as though ASWC is not doing so. How can we solve this? Reform springs to mind. There are two general directions into which I can see the house moving: First, it could move towards nonexistence. We could do away with the House of Club Representatives. I am disinclined to simply dissolve the House, but if it becomes apparent that no one is outraged (or even mildly concerned) at this suggestion, it may be the best one.
Alternatively, we could empower the House of Clubs. If we make what they do significant, maybe people would care about attending meetings. The way to do that isn’t necessarily clear, but ideas have been thrown around in the past, as long ago as spring ’06. If we sever House meetings from the Senate and have them elect their own leader: their own “Speaker of the House”: they’ll be responsible for their own meetings, which makes me anticipate more efficiency. Next, if we give them the powers to enact just as much change as the Senate, and then require that every act of ASWC be passed by both chambers, they might feel like more than just the Senate’s rubber stamp. Sound better to the club reps? I don’t know, but it sounds better to me.
The one thing that stops me in my tracks is this: Does anyone care enough to change it? Would people really rather keep going to meetings than go through the (admittedly extensive) process to change those meetings? I sincerely hope that wasting time is less attractive than slogging through systematic reform, but the cynical part of me has doubts.
