[1105] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
UAP, what s/he does, and visibility
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (asarahm)
Wed Mar 13 13:17:24 2002
Message-ID: <200203131753.MAA21285@department-of-alchemy.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 12:53:58 -0500
From: asarahm <asarahm@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
The UAP's role is partly visible, and partly behind the scenes.
that's true of pretty much any president (or CEO, etc) that
I can think of..
People have been talking about "getting things done". Though they're
not really clear about what they mean. In terms of
getting-things-done <tm>, if you're referring to influencing
administrative decision making, or changing the status quo regarding
institute policy, the student governments have NO POWER WHATSOEVER.
There is nothing written down that says that President Vest has to get
the UAP's approval on anything. And it's not just the upper
administration, but pretty much every single administrative and
faculty decision is made without student input.
The student input that does influence these decisions comes from
either the decision-maker asking the students, or the students
pestering the decision-maker until s/he listens to the students.
In my time in student government/activism, both happened. But
the decision-makers really only listened when they respected the
student, when they felt that the opinions were well thought out,
well supported. If the decision-maker felt that an opinion was
a fringe one, it was discarded.
We are lobbyists. And aside from the few cases of wide-spread
agreement and unrest, we can do little other than lobby. The fight to
save the dot is the one case I can think of where we had another
option other than pleading our case. But there are very few
situations where we can pull together that kind of unity, and have a
kind of strike. In this case we are very different from the graduate
students, since they can effectively strike. They are more like a
union because they have something that the administration needs. The
only thing that undergraduates have that the administrators need is
tuition. And, alas, there are hundreds of people out there who will
happily take your places if you all were to refuse to pay your
bursar's bills.
If Rhett wins this election b/c he bought his way there, I believe
that he will not be respected by the decision-makers, especially
high up in the administration. This means they will make their
decisions without him, and, probably, without other student input
since they believe that the proper person to ask about undergraduate
opinion is the UA president. It means that *if* Rhett wants to
actually have the decision-makers listen to him, he'll have to work
a hell of a lot harder.
But, hey, I'm just another bitter alum. But this one agrees with
Kelly that there is a lot that the UA does for students, and a lot
more it could do if it were pushed harder. And really, I don't
think that any of the candidates will push the UA to better itself.
I think that will only happen when this discussion about who the UA
is and should be, and what the UAP's job is and should be survives
past election season. It's easy to write an email spouting how flawed
the UA is. I challenge all of you to actually try to change it.
take care
-sarah, '01
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