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.

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Brain surgeon to another: "Hey, this isn't rocket science".
Rocket scientist to another: "Hey, this isn't brain surgery".

Forum Moderator - Xavier Aruba

I like the quiz, but if it is USMLE-style you shouldn't have a 25% chance of guessing it right.

I agree, the eligibility rules that are currently in practice for SGA need to be changed. I know if I was in MD4 and had 6 months or so until I took step 1, SGA should be the least of my problems.

The VP position should be open to MD1 or 2 and the president position should be open to MD3 or 4. There is too much restriction on which semester a student can run for a particular position.. this only leads to nobody running. If a student shows promise for a particular position and can bring about real change they shouldn't be limited because of their semester.

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Chris

life experience - define your locus of control, don't let it define you.

Did you vote today? In case you didn't, nobody is running. Well, except for Vice President. The one person running for president -- who is a good friend of mine -- doesn't really want it; he ran as a default candidate. One person ran for secretary/treasurer, and no one ran for social director, so they put a write-in line on the ballot. Don't look forward to a lot of social events this semester. This contrasts sharply with the situation three and four semesters ago, when we had vibrant contests, and meetings attended by the whole student body to hear campaign speeches.

What does it all mean? (No need to answer; it's rhetorical.) It indicates malaise, a feeling that it really doesn't matter who gets elected, because nothing will get done. Regrettably, that's probably true. I've been pounding away at two issues since I got here: the elimination of the humiliating school uniform requirement (make it optional if you think students want it), and the formation of a Faculty Code of Conduct, which I had the audacity to author and present to the new owners. There has been no movement on either issue, or on anything else of substance.

Historically, the SGA has been very good at presenting individual student complaints to the administration in an aggressive, in-your-face manner, but singularly ineffective in changing anything of importance to the general population. As I've said in numerous posts, the common langauge here is money, so the only way to effect change is through actions that threaten the income stream. Students are afraid to participate in such actions because the stakes are mistakenly perceived as very high; students incorrectly assume that this school is their one shot at medicine, and are loathe to risk all by tweaking the noses of school officials. How wrong they are; they need only inquire of other Carib schools -- as I have, including just yesterday -- to find out how hungry other schools are for their money and how accomodating they may be to get it.

It will be interesting to see how this semester plays out with the SGA, which will be inundated with a record number of complaints due to the change of ownership.

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Brain surgeon to another: "Hey, this isn't rocket science".
Rocket scientist to another: "Hey, this isn't brain surgery".

Forum Moderator - Xavier Aruba

3 months is not enough time for SGA to make any significant changes. The only president who was able to make ANY kind of change for the school was John. You are right, the SGA president needs to be picked from Med 2 or Med 3 and should stay president until they are done in Aruba.

It's hard to change things at this school when the students don't stick together, no one in administration listen to you and students are actually afraid of administration. Certain students get favours from admin and are afraid to get exposed so they don't want to do anything to piss them off. It's really stupid.

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