Staff Editorial | VSA must commit to student engagement in coming year

As Vassar Student Association (VSA) spring elections come to a close tomorrow, The Miscellany News will take this opportunity to reflect on the role of student government.

What should student government at Vassar do, what does it do now, and how are the responses to the previous two questions different? Answering these questions are steps toward a fuller understanding of the upsides and downsides of the VSA.

Elected leaders are responsible for ensuring that student voices are heard and incorporated into a variety of major policies, from food service to renovations to the future of the College bookstore.

Particularly with the addition of the Vice President for Student Life last year, the six-member VSA Executive Board for 2007-2008 has taken on a range of issues. Some of the long-term issues on the VSA agenda this year have been gender-neutral housing, 24-hour study space, and the Community Shuttle. The incoming VSA Council should continue the momentum of these concrete matters of campus living. These areas for improvement should be addressed with urgency, since they pose the risk of severing communication wires and trust between students and their elected representatives.

Right now, committees are a problem. Although there have been some improvements in the interactions between students and the VSA bureaucracy, the numbers of committees (formal, ad-hoc and “unofficial advisory groups” concerning the bookstore) are ever increasing as their usefulness continues to spiral downward.

Monthly reports given at VSA Council meetings regularly outline the ineffectiveness of committees, often due to poor student and administrator attendance. Neither the Committee on Disability Issues nor the Bookstore Advisory Committee met last semester due to miscommunication. Outgoing VSA President Sam Charner ’08 has corroborated that there are a fair amount of unproductive committees, explaining that the committees with the most specific jobs tend to be the most successful—for example, the Orientation Committee. The Miscellany News urges new VSA Council members to prune unnecessary committees as its first agenda item.

Recently, there have been rumblings among student clubs about the VSA’s micromanagement of organizations. For example, a new policy urges student organizations to spend their entire annual budget because the money will no longer roll over to the next year. With the late announcement of this new rule in Spring 2008, treasurers are presently scrambling to spend their money by the end of the year, splurging on needless items instead of saving for the future. The new policy about organization spending has its benefits—but throwing away money at the end of this year does not model the kind of fiscal responsibility that should be part of all VSA budget-related rules.

Looking to the future, all of the 2008-2009 VSA presidential candidates have addressed many of these pivotal issues in their candidates’ statements. Whether the concern is gender-neutral housing or the micromanagement of student organizations, each student has given a great deal of thought to the largest issues facing our student government. Candidates’ ideas range from having committees send monthly reports via e-mail to holding Council meetings specifically aimed toward hearing student perspectives.

With every spring election, the College has an opportunity to think critically about the issues facing Vassar in the coming year. The VSA Council should work toward balancing its involvement in student life, organizational control and communication with students. That said, students also need to put forth their ideas and to voice their concerns.

The Miscellany News gives the incoming VSA Council the following charges: Be transparent and facilitate activity in student organizations without enacting unnecessary roadblocks. Autonomy is the mother of creativity, and information is power.

—The staff editorial reflects the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 14-member editorial board.