Editorial: MSA Senate needs shaking up

Published April 8, 2011

An attitude of apathy toward student government permeates MU's student body, and although much of that rests on students' own disinterest in campus politics, Missouri Students Association senators aren't doing themselves any favors. The Senate is taking steps to fight irrelevancy but is moving in the wrong direction. To truly recapture the influence MSA's legislative branch should have senators need to focus on external issues, not tweak the group's internal operations.

There were only 14 new senators that ran for election and eight current senators ran for reelection, which puts next year’s membership’s grand total at 22. For the record, MSA Bylaws state a full Senate consists of 71 senators.

The blame seems to rest at least in part on the Board of Elections Commissioners, who failed at advertising the election and soliciting student participation. During the election, then-BEC-Chairman Jake Sloan was transitioning to senate speaker. When the organization’s role is set around planning and running MSA elections, they sure picked a good time to hand over the reigns to a vice chairperson.

With only 22 spots filled by student-elected senators, almost 50 students will have to run at large next year, meaning they are voted in by the Senate almost automatically.

Essentially, when senators aren’t elected by the students they’re supposed to represent, they have no incentive to do their jobs since they don’t feel responsible to their constituencies. They don’t need to necessarily be proposing legislation all the time, but they should at least be making an attempt to initiate contact or discussion with the students they represent.

Yes, it’s also the culture of our campus. Generally, students have long been apathetic to MSA, but at least senators tried harder in the past. Plus, it’s MSA’s job to get students to care about student government, and a lack of advertising and solicitation of student involvement fosters an exclusive environment.

It seems that Senate has become internally focused and is run solely by the committee chairpersons. It’s become a club, not a student government. It appears that senators are only focused on climbing the internal ladder; meaning they’re focused on becoming chairpersons or the Speaker. Yes, it’s okay to participate in MSA as a resume builder, but that doesn’t mean that Senators should lose sight of their jobs.

Yes, there are some committees that are at least making an attempt at being productive. The Multicultural Issues Committee has been productive, as well as the committee on Academic Affairs, who has been working on a long-term solution to lowering textbook prices. At the beginning of the semester, former Senate Speaker Evan Woods tried to solicit all committees to compile a list of goals, but had no feedback after several attempts.

Without goals to accomplish, what’s the point? The Senate needs to do more to focus on campus issues, not MSA issues. They have been productive in their revision of MSA bylaws, BEC responsibilities and making new positions to foster Senator retention—but what good does all this do when, one, the majority of students show no interest in MSA and, two, Senate has barely done anything productive in regards to campus issues?

Why doesn’t Senate set some goals that aren’t based on the inner workings of MSA? That would at least be trying to be productive.

It’s become clear that Senate needs to be reformed, and MSA should follow through on its intentions in regards to the Constitutional Convention and change how senators are elected, because it isn’t working the way it is now. Senators themselves need to take their jobs more seriously.

Some suggestions? As a start, they should start dressing at least semi-professionally at meetings. No organization will ever be taken seriously if it doesn’t present itself professionally. Furthermore, Senators need to do more to initiate communication with their constituencies in order to find out what goals they should set. There’s a novel idea. If the senators are incapable of coming up with their own ideas, then they can talk to the students they represent. A student body of 30,000 is bound to have an idea or two.

It may seem like we are sitting on our high horse barking out orders to Senate, but our current editorial board’s members have collectively attended almost every Senate meeting for the past three years. We have seen somewhat full Senate meetings last for two hours dwindle to what it is today: a 22-member clique who does nothing for 45 minutes and passes itself off as student government.

Getting the students to acknowledge and appreciate MSA requires drastic reform in the way the organization is set up. Without any significant change in the Senate’s mindset, we can expect nothing but the same ineffectiveness in the future.