Don’t take this the wrong way, Student Government Association (SGA), but you are worthless. This isn’t really meant in a derogatory way – I mean that, as currently incorporated, you have zero worth to this university and its students. Negative worth, really, as Northeastern would be vastly improved if you ceased existing.
This time last year, I wrote an article on how the presidential election was essentially meaningless, as ultimate victor Michael Sabo and ultimate also-ran Sean Maloney both advocated the same positions and the same ideas, and the winner would eventually accomplish nothing of value. Honestly, I could take last year’s column, copy it, replace “Sabo” with Petrin and “Maloney” with LaColla, and print that again, but even I’m not that lazy.
Well, we get to elect the Executive Vice President (EVP) this year, so that’s something. I mean, it’s not made abundantly clear to students what the EVP does; I don’t know precisely what goes on in the SGA offices that makes them feel a line of succession is necessary. It’s also contested by Terry MacCormack and Nick Naraghi, two senators who are so similar that they both got caught exploiting a little-known online vote counter during last year’s SGA election to win a contest they themselves were running as part of the Elections Committee.
At least SGA does things for the students, right? Things like passing a Sense of the Senate that we shouldn’t have Chick-fil-A despite SGA advocating to bring Chick-fil-A in the first place. And their accomplishments page is so hard up for accomplishments that they include such recent successes as “Gallery 360 creation,” “Promoted school spirit through the DieHard Dog campaign” and “Direct Election of Student Body President,” all of which I’m fairly certain occurred before I started at Northeastern way back in 2008.
This would all be benign if it weren’t for the fact that SGA sucks up chunks of our Student Activity Fee, disperses our money as it sees fit to the friends and allies of finance board members and pays its executive board a hefty stipend for doing largely nothing. It also forces all student opinion on issues to go through the same pointless, bureaucratic mouthpiece by holding itself as the only legitimate voice for the students, providing a convenient way to ensure that disagreeable groups are neatly ignored, and are in turn ignored by the administration.
If the backlash against Chick-fil-A, the rise of Knockout Barstool and the advocacy for Chartwells’ workers are any evidence, the student body can organize and lobby the administration and apply pressure for improvement quite well without any assistance from SGA. Removing SGA as the alleged voice of the students allows for actual student opinion to shine.
The sensible solution would be to end SGA, replacing it with a student-hired ombudsman whose sole job is to act as an independent intermediary between students and their organization with President Joseph Aoun, Vice President of Student Affairs Laura Wankel and the rest of the administration. No dozens of senators, no pointless executive positions, no useless establishment and something might just get done that the students actually care about.
If SGA cares about the student body – and that’s far from a certainty – they should implement this system and dissolve immediately. The only effective thing SGA can do for Northeastern will be to end itself.
But they won’t. So good luck to the new president, whichever twin he may be, and here’s to hoping that our future executive vice president tips his barber well after his free haircuts.
– Michael Denham can be reached at [email protected].
