“Excuse me, do you know who the student body president is?”
“Oh yeah, his name is Tony … no never mind, I don’t know.”
It is bad enough that students don’t know where the Student Government office is. It’s even worse that some don’t even know our president’s name! (It’s Tony Teixeira, by the way.) What is most intriguing about this whole situation is that I’m new here and I have no idea what Student Government does. Something tells me I’m not the only one. What is SG doing to help me and the thousands of other students who have no idea what is going here?
In a recent survey I conducted, 29 out of 40 people said they didn’t know where the SG office is. In fact, most people weren’t aware of the upcoming elections for the House of Representatives and Senate.
“I haven’t even heard anything about the elections,” junior Catie Jackson says. “I know that they usually send e-mails letting students know about it, but I don’t even pay attention to them.”
So that’s it? That’s all student government does to promote elections? Simple little e-mails that students don’t even read?
You see, in a real world election, candidates make themselves known – they give speeches and get their names and faces out there. If you’ve been living under a rock, you probably haven’t noticed that candidates for the primary election are debating everywhere … a year early. They don’t just sign up on a sheet of paper saying that they want to run for a spot in the House or Senate and not actually do all the work that comes with it. Most students don’t even know who the candidates are I don’t even know who the candidates are.
The fact that nobody knows what’s going on with SG except SG tells me that the only ones who vote are the people already familiar with the candidates you know, their friends which makes it all seem like a popularity contest to me. They may as well sign up for the Miss America Pageant. I wonder who would win the swimsuit competition.
You’d also think a group of people who want to “get themselves known” by the student body would actually find time in their busy schedules to update their Web site. Unfortunately, I have no idea who Rakibur R. Joarder is; apparently he’s the SG governor. However, if I’m wrong, don’t blame me for giving you false information. For a group that’s getting paid by part of our tuition to represent us, you’d think they would know how to get with the times.
If you ask me, I didn’t even see a poster around campus that said anything about elections. Did candidates even have a campaign? Who were they? Even in my high school with 3,500 students, which is minimal compared to FAU, everyone still knew what the purpose of our Student Government was. Although it was still a popularity contest, students knew who the candidates were. We knew what candidates stood for, and they promoted themselves through videos and visible campaigns.
Besides, what does SG do for FAU? It doesn’t say anything on their Web site about what their purpose is; the only thing that I was able to find was their constitution, and even that is hidden. I still don’t understand what their purpose is besides providing clubs and organizations with a budget. What is their role among students? What are they really going to do for me and my fellow classmates to make our lives at college easier?
Student Government needs better organization, because it seems as if their leaders just want to walk around like the kings of the campus and carry a title in which they don’t even do anything. Let’s just hope for better leadership (and, of course, more free things).
