In the midst of this year’s batch of A.S. candidate statements —among the lofty promises to fight for this and advocate that — lurk a few strange propositions made by otherwise straight-shooting candidates. One candidate aims to “open A.S. to all students;” another words this sentiment a little differently by promising to “create [a] welcoming A.S. environment for all.”
And yet it gets worse. During April 2’s candidate debates, two candidates voiced their number one goal if elected as increasing student involvement in Associated Students. Students First! candidate Harish Nandagopal is quoted as saying, “My number one priority as A.S. president will be to change the A.S. structure so we get more students involved.” Independent presidential candidate Steve York voiced this same sentiment, lamenting that “A.S. is a closed-door club.”
If the A.S. Council is truly a closed-door club, this is a problem — a government composed of only an exclusive group of people is a sign of an aristocracy, not a democracy. Yet it’s odd for many candidates to claim to seek increased student involvement in student government when most UCSD students have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want to be involved with the A.S. Council in any way, shape or form. Furthermore, if student government is competent, students have even less incentive to want to get involved. If government works well, the average person barely has to think about it.
To be fair, the candidates who are effectively advocating bigger government were perhaps simply padding their candidate statements or spouting empty rhetoric during the debates. If either of these scenarios are the case, then candidates should be ashamed for degrading the quality of their own campaign. Yet the truth is probably uglier. These candidates aren’t content to wile away their college careers advocating on behalf of their constituents — they want to drag the constituents themselves into the lumbering, bureaucratic process of student government.
But why? If UCSD students wanted to get involved with student government, they would run for office, attend town hall meetings and vote. But UCSD students, as a whole, willingly avoid all these tasks. Less than 20 percent of UCSD students voted in last year’s A.S. elections, as scandal-laden and heavily publicized as they were. Furthermore, when town hall meetings are held — for example, the ones held in regards to the University Centers expansion — a negligible number of students actually attend.
Should UCSD students be brow-beaten for being apathetic toward politics? Who knows — but in any case, it’s unproductive to do so. The average person — the average student, especially — has immediate interests (like completing class assignments) that supersede the issues that concern government representatives. Most UCSD students don’t want to worry about fee referenda, the best way to improve the parking situation, or any of the other matters that the A.S. Council concerns itself with — they simply want problems fixed, enjoyable events offered and the like. And that is the precise reason why student government exists — so a small group of dedicated students can act in the interests of other students. Most of us aren’t interested or qualified to go through the bureaucratic red tape that’s necessary to accomplish anything in student government.
The whole point of electing government is to elect a competent group of representatives that are in tune with their constituents and act on their behalf. If this process occurs, the constituents (in this case, UCSD students) should not have to worry about their government or the issues they’re working on. So if this year’s A.S. candidates truly want to fight on our behalf, they should hardly demand that more students become involved with the A.S. Council. Government representatives should make politics their job so the average person doesn’t have to.
Governments, especially student governments, face the unenviable task of fighting on the behalf of an unappreciative constituency. Furthermore, when a government works well — when it’s small, streamlined, effective and efficient — the average constituent should barely notice it’s there. Only when a government makes a mistake or fails to serve their needs do people notice it even exists.
Regardless of why UCSD students as a whole shy away from voting and other forms of civic involvement, it’s clear that we don’t want to get involved with government, or feel we don’t have to for things to run reasonably smooth. Thus, our elected representatives should hardly concern themselves with dragging more people into the long meetings, drafting of resolutions and paperwork of UCSD student government. Very few of us are “student government types,” which is for the best — if we were all intensely interested in the issues concerning the A.S. Council, no decisions would ever be made.
Lying behind the candidates’ basically identical campaign promises lies a fundamental confusion and disagreement over the role the A.S. Council should play within UCSD, San Diego and California. This confusion should be explicitly addressed as next year’s A.S. Council is assembled, for a government needs to understand its role before it proceeds with anything else.
Present councilmembers are often maligned for allegedly wasting time on resolutions regarding state or national political issues. It’s healthy for our student government to be aware of issues larger than the university, but needless to say, concerns immediate to UCSD should be a higher priority than drafting such resolutions. The disagreement about the usefulness of these resolutions reflects this basic tension between what the councilmembers want to do and what they were elected to accomplish — as does this current spat of misguided campaign promises.
The new A.S. Council would be well-served to get back to basics and realize that it serves the students, and the average student simply doesn’t desire to become embroiled in the council’s weighty but bureaucratic affairs.
