After five weeks of deliberation, Lindsay Richardson withdrew Student Government’s proposed constitution before student senate could take a vote Wednesday.
It’s tough not to be frustrated after an inordinate amount of time is wasted trying to pass legislation that largely wouldn’t affect the student body. Frankly, the bill should have been introduced much earlier than it was to avoid this missed buzzer-beater, but there’s not much sense crying over lost time now.
The good news is that the senate had a fairly productive session. There were 40 pieces of legislation, a handful of resolutions and overhauls of the finance and SG codes over the course of the 2013-14 term.
Generally, government is either moving forward or backward. If you ask us, SG made respectable progress, but that’s not to say we’re getting complacent, or even content.
We’d like to see more out of SG regarding issues that truly impact the student body. Passing legislation that will improve participation in SG is one way of going about it, but we don’t suspect SG can be improved much by sheer force of volume. SG has likely already attracted many of the passionate and driven students it can in order to get things done. Further cultivation isn’t necessary, but application certainly is.
After a year focused on working on SG’s internal issues, it’s time the organization gets to work on the problems facing the student body at large.
What’s promising is that there are indeed members of SG who are aware of the disparity between enacting legislation and actually making an impact.
One solution, mentioned by Student Body Vice President-elect Donnie Iorio, is creating an open floor for students to voice their concerns to the student senate. In order to better serve the student body, SG needs to better acquaint itself with the pressing needs of the student body. The exposure that opening up the floor to others would provide is paramount in measuring the pulse of campus.
For the record, it’s not like SG’s track record with this kind of thing is terribly dismal. After all, they did get work done this year on the Carolina Cab service and Walk Home Cocky, along with a few other programs. It’s just that we’d like to see more of that and less of the internal squabbling that tends to happen quite often on Wednesday nights.
SG is at its best when it’s acting as a direct medium between the student body and USC’s administration. It’s all fun and games when they’re patting themselves on the back and passing legislation to bolster their ranks, but when a long-debated bill is withdrawn on the last meeting of the term, priorities need to be reconsidered.
Student Government has served the school well in the past, but it has yet to realize its full potential as a body. A solid first step in doing so would be improving its contact with the student body in order to focus the issues that truly matter.