Constituency, shmostituency

I pondered what would be the subject of today’s column for quite some time. Should I talk about clubs’ relationships with umbrella organizations and the Inter-School Governing Board? What about the relationship between Barnard and Columbia? How about the Senate’s consideration of an egregious confidentiality policy restricting records for 50 years that is backed by a CC senator? What about the fact that most students don’t donate back to the school as alumni?

Then it hit me. I was looking outward for problems. The reality is that many issues come from within the organizations built to solve them—the student councils.
For the last few years it has seemed like the idea of “constituency” has fallen to the wayside. It has been a constant ego match where people espouse trivial stories like “Well, when I went to John Jay I thought X,” rather than actually talking to their constituents.

Engineering Student Council President Whitney Green is one of the very few who has made sure that the representatives speak for their constituents. Every week the council members are required to talk to at least three students about an issue. Last week, for example, that issue was the Center for Career Education. The doomed Columbia College Student Council 311 program failed to grasp the idea of constituency. The councils don’t exist to passively accept feedback or to spam inboxes with “What problems do you see on campus?” The new iteration, CCSC Café makes huge strides to meet the students, but yet may still be too passive. Representatives need to MAKE actual face time with their constituents and talk about singular issues.

I often get flak for supposedly promoting my own agenda, especially on the NROTC issue last year. But I was truly vindicated when the campus survey showed that a majority of SEAS students made the rational choice (as SEAS students tend to be infinitely more rational than most of their undergraduate counterparts) to say that NROTC should have a chapter on Columbia’s campus. If I didn’t know that SEAS students would benefit from NROTC I would never have brought the issue up. Constituency is important to me, but I am afraid the same does not apply to every council member.

Fundamentally, 75 percent of council members are there for their own egos or, worse, their resumes. This explains why most do not speak up in meetings. But that remaining 25 percent is outright dangerous when they propose legislation that is wholly contrary to the interests of the overall constituency and benefits only the individual’s cadre of friends. A perfect example is the CCSC E-Board’s idea of granting Barnard students swipe access. This sounds great in principle. I would love it if I could interact freely with my friends across the street in my dorm as well as in theirs.

Oh… Wait… What? The proposed initiative ONLY gives swipe access to BC students to access CC/SEAS dorms but NOT the other way around?!?! Let’s be real for a second. The vast majority of the students believe in equivalent exchange. Why should CC/SEAS open our dorms to Barnard students when Barnard doesn’t let our students in? Any group that is supposed to represent the students but creates a policy that most students would not agree with is not following the idea of constituency.
But constituency goes beyond this. How well is a council serving its students when the president doesn’t send them e-mails about events? Or when class council meetings are poorly organized and poorly attended? Some councils are failing students at basic levels.

The very idea of constituency escapes some. I was extremely disturbed last year when the ESC unilaterally decided that the senators were accountable to the ESC, not to the students. I tend to believe councils are microcosms that do not necessarily reflect the needs of those they are supposed to represent. Further, the ESC didn’t elect me senator. The students did! This year CCSC wisely accepted that the senators’ constituency was the student body. Why are other councils behind the curve?
What’s more, the ESC and CCSC consistently fail their students where it matters most. On average, of the 12 council members required to sit in ESC policy meetings, nine of them turn over every year. That means every year nine new people have to be trained and administrators have to explain the same details every year. With that kind of turnover in any organization, can anything be accomplished? CCSC sees similar turnover.

Bafflingly, neither the ESC nor the CCSC passes down information year to year in an adequate manner. The vice president of policy for 2008 may not know what the vice president of policy in 2007 did, nor could he find out easily that some issue that 2008 wants to bring up was brought up in 2005 and was determined to be infeasible. CCSC’s list of successful resolutions is all well and good, but a resource that is not provided is a database of failed issues and what the key issues / who the key players were.
Every year ESC and CCSC thus basically reinvent the wheel. How is this productive for our constituents? This is why ESC and CCSC get the reputation of being ineffective and why some administrators don’t consider the ESC and CCSC to be serious contenders in campus politics. If the councils want to help their students they need to listen to their constituents and remember whom they are there to serve.

Rajat Roy is a School of Engineering and Applied Science senior majoring in industrial engineering and operations research with a minor in environmental engineering. He is a university senator from SEAS. Cutting the Blue Tape runs alternate Thursdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com