fossildoc
05-17-2008, 07:53 PM
Under the rules governing the election of SGA officers, the president must be chosen from among the Med 4 students.
Who exactly made that rule? Why, noneother than the administration, with whom the SGA, by its very nature, has an adversarial relationship.
Change always hurts somebody. Consumer reform hurts the merchant chiselers. Tort reform hurts the lawyers. Self-paced learning hurts the teachers. And so, any changes instigated by the SGA are bound to annoy some group -- students or faculty -- who benefits from the old way, even if those changes are for the general good. Since changes advocated by the SGA invariably demand movement by the administration, why is it that the administration gets to dictate the qualifications of its representatives? This seems to be a built-in check on the power of the students. It's like a military junta announcing democratic elections, except that only current and former generals are allowed to run for office.
Take the following USMLE-style quiz:
What thought is foremost in the consciousness of the Med 4 student?
(a) next week's basketball game
(b) passing Pathology
(c) formulating a long-range plan for the general improvement of campus facilities and academic standards
(d) getting off this island and making it a distant memory
If you answered (c), you probably think a Med 4 student should be president because of his/her "experience", and you would be a dupe of the administration, who knows that the answer is (d). In other words, a Med 4 student has little motivation beyond having the presidency on his/her record as evidence of community service. Why should such a student be involved with the development of plans that might take two or three semesters to implement, and therefore have no effect on her/him?
I favor the election of a Med 2 or Med 3 student to the office of SGA president. There is value in having completed at least one Med level, because things work very differently for Meds than for Pre-Meds. But it doesn't take more than one semester to figure things out around here, so I prefer a Med 2 student who can agitate for changes that s/he will be around to see (or not, depending on the outcome).
I also advocate hounding the Assistant Dean of Basic Sciences, who is in charge of SGA doings, into abandoning all requirements as to the grade level for various officers, and let students freely elect whomever they want. Imagine the trucking companies telling the teamster's union that they can only elect union officers from those who have been truckers for five years. If the Dean refuses, I recommend a write-in vote for "none of the above" for all officers in the forthcoming election.
And if that doesn't work, I advocate boycotting entirely whatever puppet SGA government might be elected under the school's rules, and forming an off-campus, independent student union which truly represents the students.
Who exactly made that rule? Why, noneother than the administration, with whom the SGA, by its very nature, has an adversarial relationship.
Change always hurts somebody. Consumer reform hurts the merchant chiselers. Tort reform hurts the lawyers. Self-paced learning hurts the teachers. And so, any changes instigated by the SGA are bound to annoy some group -- students or faculty -- who benefits from the old way, even if those changes are for the general good. Since changes advocated by the SGA invariably demand movement by the administration, why is it that the administration gets to dictate the qualifications of its representatives? This seems to be a built-in check on the power of the students. It's like a military junta announcing democratic elections, except that only current and former generals are allowed to run for office.
Take the following USMLE-style quiz:
What thought is foremost in the consciousness of the Med 4 student?
(a) next week's basketball game
(b) passing Pathology
(c) formulating a long-range plan for the general improvement of campus facilities and academic standards
(d) getting off this island and making it a distant memory
If you answered (c), you probably think a Med 4 student should be president because of his/her "experience", and you would be a dupe of the administration, who knows that the answer is (d). In other words, a Med 4 student has little motivation beyond having the presidency on his/her record as evidence of community service. Why should such a student be involved with the development of plans that might take two or three semesters to implement, and therefore have no effect on her/him?
I favor the election of a Med 2 or Med 3 student to the office of SGA president. There is value in having completed at least one Med level, because things work very differently for Meds than for Pre-Meds. But it doesn't take more than one semester to figure things out around here, so I prefer a Med 2 student who can agitate for changes that s/he will be around to see (or not, depending on the outcome).
I also advocate hounding the Assistant Dean of Basic Sciences, who is in charge of SGA doings, into abandoning all requirements as to the grade level for various officers, and let students freely elect whomever they want. Imagine the trucking companies telling the teamster's union that they can only elect union officers from those who have been truckers for five years. If the Dean refuses, I recommend a write-in vote for "none of the above" for all officers in the forthcoming election.
And if that doesn't work, I advocate boycotting entirely whatever puppet SGA government might be elected under the school's rules, and forming an off-campus, independent student union which truly represents the students.