Reality check: Senators work together to accomplish goals
Student government initiatives don’t get accomplished unless everyone is on board.
Most of the USUSA Academic Senate agrees on this point.
Executive vice president Thomas Buttars said the senate made a point of working together this school year, even when everyone had their own separate goals.
“I’m sure almost every single one of the officers had an initiative that they realized was not easy to accomplish, if not impossible,” Buttars said. “There’s a system here, and you have to learn how it works.”
Science Senator Joseph Day said one of his initiatives was to create an internship program — upon taking office, however, he learned that the dean already had a group of employees dedicated to that very purpose. Looking back, he said, he would have changed his initiative to market the opportunities that were already available.
“I think a lot of people had this notion that when you’re in office, you’re a student leader and so you can just start making changes, but I don’t think a lot of people realize that there’s a lot of hoops to jump through,” Day said.
Day encouraged the 2016-17 USUSA officers to their research — talking to faculty, students and administrators, then deciding if an initiative is feasible.
“I’m not saying that people shouldn’t work toward their initiatives, because I think they should,” Day said. “But the important thing to know is it’s not going be easy and it’s going take a lot of work and a lot of persistence.”
With some initiatives, however, effort and dedication aren’t enough.
“The hard thing about any initiative is, to actually get lasting, sustainable change, you have to have administration and faculty support. Faculty support doesn’t move within a year on almost any issue,” said Ty Aller, Graduate Studies Senator.” So without effective collaboration between incoming and outgoing officers and faculty and administration, you’re not ever going to get anything done.”
Aller used the example of the Aggie Recreation Center, which opened last November. It took seven years and five student body presidents to finish the building.
The academic senate’s No-Test Week Policy legislation will likely spill over into next year, even with all of the senators collaborating on it.
“One of the things I ran on was trying to unite the academic senate. I was told in the past that sometimes the senate is a little dysfunctional and they feel a little separated from the executive vice president,” Buttars said. “I felt like I was able to do that.”
In uniting the senate, Buttars allowed the officers to create a culture in which they respected each other and felt comfortable. He relaxed the house rules and let the meetings be more conversational.
“There are smart aleck comments thrown around, and I could have very easily called order and just ended it, but that wouldn’t have solved anything,” Buttars said. “That would have just quieted them down and rubbed people the wrong way.”
Business Senator Ben Vera said he basically accomplished his initiatives, but — like many officers — he wishes he could have done more. One thing he was satisfied with was his goal to raise awareness of job placements. Business School Associate Dean Dave Patel started collaborating with Vera almost immediately after he took office. The school congratulated 10 different students on job placements, which Vera said started a buzz in the business school. Younger students put post-graduation life more at the forefront of their minds, he said.
“Collaborating with other senators has also been a really great thing for me — like Mental Health Week. Obviously that’s mostly Ty and Trevor’s initiative, but we’ve all kind of offered our input and so we can all take a little piece that and say that we did that,” said Arts Senator Sam Meredith.
He said sometimes senators focus too much on programming and not enough on making changes within their college. With the exception of the Student Events Vice President, he thinks officers should go beyond events.
“There’s so much good that you can do outside of just planning a good college week. It’s very possible to plan the best college week ever and be a sub-par senator, but with that being said you can plan an average college week and be an excellent senator,” Meredith said.
He advised the new officers to focus on what students care about, initiative-wise.
“If you do that and make that your priority, then I think you’ll be successful whether or not you have a bajillion people at the masquerade ball,” he said.
Events are an opportunity for officers to support each other, however.
“We’ve all supported each other during our college weeks, with only a few exceptions,” said CHaSS Senator Jeff Sonderegger.
In the Statesman Elections packet last year, one of Sonderegger’s initiatives was to secure funding for the debate team and ROTC. The debate team lost their funding in November. Sonderegger said he tried on several occasions to meet with the debate team adviser, Tim Worthen.
“They never got back to me. I spoke with their adviser in the first week of school. I told him I wanted to meet with them, and they agreed. He was the contact, but he never got back to me. I suspect he’s a busy man,” he said. “This one blew up on the runway. There’s only so much work you can get done if you can’t meet with the people.”
Sometimes faculty and administrators see things differently than officers, from their point of view, however.
“I always got back to him,” Worthen said. “If someone’s going be our advocate and give us money, I’m going to get back to them … If it’s in his platform, you’d think he would have taken more initiative.”
Worthen said developing a platform and initiatives is like crafting a thesis — if one gets to the end of their essay and doesn’t go back to their thesis statement, they forget where they are. Worthen encouraged officers to go back to their core values and be assertive in meeting with faculty and staff.
Statesman reporters reached out to Education Senator Jennifer Dutdut, but were unable to conduct an interview. Her initiatives are not included in the graphic.
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