By
Little kids play doctor … but big kids get to play politician. But maybe it’s time for the big kids to stop playing and act like real representatives and leaders.
It’s a good thing the SGA senate opted to hold a closed session last Tuesday, because the portion of Academic Vice President Sarah Hester’s removal hearing that was open to the public was embarrassing.
Apparently the meeting was closed because they didn’t want the drama to “show up in The Cardinal,” and have the whole campus privy to the details. Why the secrecy? Even Hester’s mom was turned out. This just looks shady, and to those senators who didn’t vote to close the meeting, thanks for displaying some character.
At the hearing, senators couldn’t decide whether to hold an individual roll call vote or have a stand-up vote. When they decided to hold a roll call vote, some complained that it wasn’t “fair” to make anyone vote first. Then they argued whether to start at the beginning or end of the alphabet.
Some senators expressed contempt for the sophomoric behavior of their peers. Sympathy for Executive Vice President Bill Brammell, who had to play ringleader to this circus, should be given freely.
Some senators also thought the vote would have turned out differently with a different voting method. If that is true, the senate is in a pretty sad state. That they voted almost unanimously to impeach Hester in her absence and then were afraid to vote when she showed up for her hearing is just more proof that the SGA, as an organization, is illegitimate.
How can these people consider themselves leaders? The next time the SGA senate has to vote on something, they should go the Louisville Zoo and watch monkeys fling poo at each other instead. It might be good for them to see themselves as the rest of the campus does.
Does the SGA realize the only thing they accomplished was damaging their reputations? In trying to oust Hester, the SGA senate slit its own throat with indecisive flip-flopping when it came time to condemn her face-to-face. This shows there should never have been an impeachment in the first place, and that the SGA is largely populated with duplictious invertebrates.
Speed School Senator Andy Goss made an excellent point as the meeting concluded when he said it never should have gone this far, and that the SGA must ensure a similar fiasco never happens again. Thanks, Mr. Goss; you were one of the few who made sense that night.
Some on the third floor of the SAC criticize The Cardinal for writing about public business in a public forum. This is patently absurd. What else should a campus paper do but report on campus relevant issues?
But the SGA seems more and more irrelevant all the time, so maybe they’re right after all. Perhaps we should take the advice of a recent online post and ignore the SGA all together. After all, if only 876 out of some 20,000 U of L undergrads voted this year, our readership clearly doesn’t give a damn. Let the SGA have their paid positions, tuition waivers and $600,000 budget and just leave it at that.
But we want to care. We would like to see SGA reinvent itself as an organization of mature, conscientious adults who are interested in connecting with and serving their student body in a meaningful way.We sincerely hope that Bill Brammell, Nate Haney and the rest of the SGA competence minority can turn things around next year. We would like for this space to be dedicated to informing the student body every week of what the SGA has done for them lately, and why they should care. Until then, all we can give SGA is 16 inches of bad ink.
