Trying to do too much and not trying hard enough can be equally dangerous when you’re an elected official, especially when your term is only a year long. Political platforms need to be ambitious enough to yield tangible results or be left at the door.
This is a problem that has plagued many Undergraduate Students Association Council general representatives.
This year there’s an added element to the challenges general representatives have to face: the General Representative 2 position remains vacant after the resignation of Nihal Satyadev over the summer.
A lot is riding on the results of the coming election, not just for this year’s USAC or for the winner, but for the position of general representative itself.
General representatives have been criticized in the past for not having cohesive platforms or clear-cut goals for their offices. Having clear-cut goals can be difficult when the bylaws make the position seem meaningless in the first place.
Stronger, more specific guidelines for the general representative position are needed to ensure that the office isn’t just left up to the whim of whomever holds the position. But given that the year has already started, it’s too late to just rely on a bylaw change; the new General Representative 2 has to take it upon him/herself to set the right goals and bring positive results.
General Representative 3 Fabienne Roth said general representatives were originally supposed to represent student organizations at the council table, but this has gradually changed in practice, leaving the other aims of the office more open to interpretation.
Manjot Singh, this year’s General Representative 1, said that general representatives have the ability to be close to the ground and more effectively cater to students’ needs and wants, something he looks forward to getting done this year.
The bylaws state that representing student organizations is part of the job. But general representatives can potentially take on more responsibilities on their own, which they are able to do because of the vague legislation.
That vagueness puts the onus on the councilmember.
Whomever the winner of the special election for general representative winds up being also has to strike a balance with ambitious platforms, ensuring that they’re actually attainable. Programming that could eventually become institutionalized would likely be the most effective route to find a solid middle-ground.
Other offices are set up to make lasting impacts with institutional changes, but that’s harder to do with the limited budget that general representatives are afforded. Efforts to get huge things done, especially things which will likely take time to develop, could become massive wastes of time without the proper resources. Even if they do get done before next summer, they likely wouldn’t continue into the following year.
On the flip side, if the new councilmember sets the bar too low, the lack of ambition will only intensify the criticisms of the general representative offices. The general representatives’ relatively small budgets are definitely a limiting factor, but they shouldn’t be used as excuses for not putting in the time and effort to reach reasonable goals. It’s an obstacle that can be traversed with the creative thinking of the representatives and their staffs, along with co-programming efforts with other USAC offices.
Last year’s general representatives came up short; to start with, former General Representative 1 Sam Haws got little to nothing done on his platforms. He tried to initiate projects like establishing a prayer space and revamping the BruinCard to include more functions, but he went virtually nowhere with either one. Former General Representative 3 Lizzy Naameh did almost no programming out of her office and didn’t seem to know what the direction of her office was.
Both Singh and Roth stressed the importance of providing the winner with whatever support she or he may need. It’ll take a three-part effort for the general representative offices to remain relevant or to achieve a level of functionality that will make their presence felt on campus.
The effectiveness of the three offices, with or without a defined niche on council, is entirely dependent on those holding the offices and their staffs until the vagueness of the bylaws is resolved. It’s a matter of surviving the year under extraordinary circumstances and being able to improve upon the failures of the past year.
Without visible improvements, the general representative position will spiral deeper into irrelevancy, and it’ll take a big effort to dig it back out.