After some interesting internal maneuvers on the part of the Docket, and the Senate’s decision to not simply grant us our request for committee updates directly, I am now covering the SBA for the Docket. So, yay! for no more random national political musings?
A little background first. Kuni Mirchandani, our editor-in-chief of the Docket, also serves as a 3L member of the SBA Senate. When Kuni sent out a request earlier this year for committee updates, he received limited responses. The responses he did receive he put into an SBA forum. For the committees about which he received no responses, he indicated as much. This caused great consternation amongst the SBA Senate members, seeming to culminate in a response by SBA Senator Meghan Sheehan lashing out against Kuni and the Docket. In light of the seemingly obvious conflict Mr. Mirchandani potentially faces in being both editor-in-chief of the Docket and an SBA Senator, David Byrnes and I appeared at the last SBA meeting to submit a request on behalf of the Docket for committee updates. In the course of that meeting, we observed an hour’s worth of updates on SBA activities. We also saw how the SBA really feels about many of the members’ claims of increasing accountability.
So first, the SBA updates. Rodney Pratt, our illustrious SBA President, gave a presentation about bar passage concerns and the impending end of year activities which are currently being planned. So far so good, right? Next it moved to the individual SBA committee updates.
I’d be more specific about the updates, but because I wasn’t initially planning on writing this column I wasn’t taking notes. So the Docket asked SBA Secretary Carrie Primas to provide us a copy of the minutes she took during the meeting. It’s Friday evening as I write, and still nothing. Irony, thy name is Student Government.
So, in no particular order and with some apologies in advance as this is based on my own un-aided recollection, the SBA committee updates included these highlights:
Academic Committee: ACHB reported that her attempts to converse with faculty regarding the current way the school schedules classes (i.e., allowing professors to pick their time slots and then not making them move when too many classes conflict) and about exam conflicts (i.e., not caring if we have exams on back-to-back days or 3 exams in 4 days) produced no results. Surprise…
Dean’s Advisory Committee: Kuni reported that they haven’t met since the last SBA meeting, but they would have something soon.
Facilities: The ongoing struggle over the bathrooms and grounds management is stuck in the muck. Apparently, the custodial staff is not managed by the individual school buildings, but rather is controlled by the University as a whole. Because the school officials have no control over whether or when the facilities are maintained, short of a university-wide overhaul you can expect more of the same. Great…
IT: Senator Budzinski asserted that there were no IT issues at this time. Yeah, right… This interesting statement prompted other Senators to question whether internet connectivity issues are being addressed, whether scheduling on SIS will be problematic as always, and other issues. Senator Budzinski did his best to deflect (as he obviously hadn’t considered these issues…), but because the committees are not really accountable to the SBA Senate as a whole, they just moved along.
Libraries: there was some discussion whether the study rooms would have the opaque paper put up over the glass as was done last year by the CSO (who likely thought they were doing a service to students). One female Senator expressed concern that it made it impossible to determine what was going on in that study room, enabling criminal activity of a physical kind to be obscured.
Then, with less than 10 minutes left in the meeting, came the Docket’s request. After a simple request that committees submit their updates to the Docket for publication, the Senate got really riled up. First there was concern that Senators shouldn’t have to report to the Docket. Then there was concern that if we wanted to be treated like a real paper or reporting service we should show up to the meetings and not rely on what would amount to press releases. Finally, concern was expressed over whether the kind of releases for which we were asking would violate a Senate bylaw, passed a year ago before the ratification of the new SBA Constitution. The bylaw forbids senators from representing their position as the official position of the SBA. It does not prohibit communications about the SBA by individual senators. Indeed, it would be impossible for any individual senator to communicate to their constituencies about ongoing SBA activities. Such an absurd result surely could not have been what the Senate last year intended in their hastily-prepared bylaw
So with the meeting having gone over time, the Senate voted to “interpret” their existing bylaw as not excluding communications of the type sought. Our request was not voted upon, and so this column is coming to you in lieu of any kind of semi-official representation by SBA committee persons. It was telling that the cheers and jeers which traditionally accompany the end of an SBA meeting one senator made a cheer to putting off the Docket’s request for information.
Exactly what did the Senate think was going to happen? Sure, we’ll put off their request for info as long as possible because they won’t do anything about it. We all ran on “increasing SBA accountability and making the process more open to all” but that was clearly a bunch of bull. We operate in a relative air of secrecy to the extent that no only do NO students ever show up to meetings, but they probably won’t care even if some of what happened gets reported.
This presents a myriad of problems I hope to explore in my remaining semester here. First, and maybe most critically, is the lack of real student input. Aside from annual voting which students feel is their only obligation to the whole process, from my experience no one who is not elected ever shows up to the SBA meetings when they are not either up for an appointment or in line to get SBA money to put on student org programming. By definition, we’re all guilty of it. Even aside from the merits of the situation, we allow Senate to operate in the way it does. Short of someone running a campaign on a funny picture, people who won their first year don’t lose. The numbers are even worse for the transition from 2L to 3L. Short of 2L Senators dropping out of the race to focus on other things (newly created Article II Executive positions, journal editorships, classwork, a jobsearch, etc…), 2L Senators win reelection. While some of this is the fact that people who didn’t win their first time out don’t run again, we have to question the political customs of the law school which produce these results.
Second, and almost as critically, we need to question the role of Student Government. In the words of President Obama, “let me be clear.” I’m not saying that Student Government isn’t a worthwhile organization or that they don’t do things which benefit me. To the extent that they work on issues tied to my daily existence in the building, I’m glad they try. We need to focus, however, on what power the SBA really has. The inconvenient truth is that SBA has only those powers the faculty and administration allow it to have. The SBA cannot unilaterally vote to force the administration to re-schedule classes which haven’t changed time slots since you were born. They can’t even make the custodial staff more accountable for the shitty bathrooms. And even though the moot court room is hardly used for moot court and is a terrible mock trial room, it’s likely that that room will look exactly like it does when you finally decide to hang it up in 40-something years. It’s not that SBA is useless, but it might be damn close. In truth, SBA is a kind of organized union. It doesn’t have power to change the rules by itself, but operates as a kind of go-between between students and those who really have the power.
In the coming semester I hope to flush these issues out and present a real picture of student government at the law school. Although I admit many friends are members of student government, I hope to present a rather objective picture of the SBA so that every student can decide whether and to what extent we wish to continue along this path. So far the Docket has been your snarky Monday morning entreat into the political news of the past week-and-a-half and crossword puzzles you do on the bridge while waiting for your next class to start in an hour. Personally, I want to see the Docket be more vibrant, and so I will strive to provide more substance (with the same amount of snarkiness you crave to keep it interesting). To the extent you care, let me know.
