StuCo: When Less is More

By: Arhon Strauss

Vote Senai! Vote Charlotte! They will finally change StuCo! These are phrases you have probably heard a lot in the past few weeks. With all sorts of buzz around the visitations policy and “how StuCo must change,” it can be hard to determine who has actual solutions or if Student Council (StuCo) even has the power to implement those solutions. This brings us to the largest flaw with the StuCo elections and StuCo as a whole: it has no power. 

StuCo has been used as a symbol of student representation, and some seek to use it as a way to make a difference in faculty decisions. But, time and time again, we have seen that StuCo has not affected the outcomes of these decisions. This failure doesn’t stem from a lack of willpower or confidence—most people in StuCo are fairly competent. It stems from the very infrastructure of StuCo. 

This is not to say StuCo has not done anything—take, for example, the RedBikes program, a shining example of what StuCo can do when it works. 

But advancements like this have been few and far between, taking years of bureaucracy and negotiating. This is partially due to how hard it is to actually get StuCo to use any of its money; with $30,000 in reserve, StuCo could do so much to improve student life without needing to go through the administration. But it has barely used any of this money. 

Yes, it is good to save, but saving money is pointless unless you use it.

StuCo should be using this money for everything, from improving school dances to increasing dorm funding. But it has only used a small amount of money for any of these things. 

This brings me back to my initial point: the lack of power. StuCo has the potential to make a difference: it has the resources, it has the competent members, it has a bridge into the administration. So, right now, I think that StuCo’s biggest limiter is itself, or rather the sheer number of members it has. You always hear how we need more representatives to more properly represent our student body. With each addition, however, it becomes increasingly harder to unify and rally StuCo into real action.

So, in order to fix this—to streamline the process—we need to streamline the number of people in high-level positions. The concept is simple: fewer people means less arguing and less bureaucracy, which makes ideas move faster and creates a unified front to curb the administrative hurdles for students. But this plan has its own faults: with fewer positions of power, the risk of one bad apple ruining StuCo becomes substantially higher. Ultimately, though, the likelihood of this is very low, mostly because they would have to put in the tremendous work and demonstrate the passion necessary to get elected in the first place.

Even this streamlining would not be enough to truly solve StuCo’s powerlessness. To do that, we would need to address the largest issue facing StuCo: the administration. Creating a more unified StuCo would certainly do wonders for our ability to stand up to the administration, but it needs to actually convince the administration to listen. 

To do that, StuCo would have to start producing results on a consistent basis—if it can make that leap, perhaps administration would take StuCo’s requests more seriously. If this all were to work, programs like the RedBike program would be rolled out more regularly.

StuCo is efficient, but it requires a huge amount of change to be effective. Though I don’t think it will come this election cycle or this year, there is still hope for change.