At the last Student Association meeting (Oct. 29), a wonderful thing occurred. It is called a representative democracy. As I hope you have already read, a vote about Homecoming funding came up and everything hit the fan. What I saw was to some degree the best meeting I have seen in a long time. For the most part, the undergraduate senators voted against a bill that put some strings on the SA fund being given to Program Board for Homecoming, while the graduate senators voted for the bill. What occurred was senators representing their constituents. Sounds like how a Senate and a representative government works.
For graduate students, Homecoming is not as important to undergraduate students and that is very logical. Especially at George Washington University. Many people argued that the Senate was not representing the students. That actually is false. The senators were representing their constituents.
One very unhappy camper with this was the Executive Director for Student Activities Center, Mike Gargano. He gave the performance of the night. It was the rudest, most obnoxious, self-righteous and arrogant speech I have ever heard at an SA meeting, and I have been to many. In his position, he is partly responsible with making sure Homecoming goes off well, and that’s fine. It came as a surprise to me that someone who had to be dragged into a discussion on tuition at a past town hall meeting, which is an issue almost all students care about, was so emotional about something that a far smaller amount of students feel is that important. I guess since he will look bad if Homecoming doesn’t go off well, he really cares about the issue.
In his diatribe, he seemed to feel he can tell the SA Senate what to do, and that the senators had to listen and do what he wanted of them. In principle, that is completely wrong; but it seems that in fact he was right. As what can only be seen as kowtowing to the administration, or in this case Gargano, Executive Vice President Tony Sayegh pulled a move rarely, if ever, seen. He, as executive financial officer of the SA Senate, has the power to give the money in the buffer fund to who or whatever he wants. He decided to do that at the meeting.
He was put in that position when President “Q” Golparvar vetoed the bill immediately. Golparvar did what he believed was correct, and that is also fine. It was said that the issue would be resolved there and then. Many senators were not willing to give up on their constituents because Gargano was upset. They did their job. So at that point, Sayegh decided, in a sense, to tell the senators thanks for your time and effort and representing your constituents, but no thanks. I will supersede a majority decision. He seems to have that power, and so in that way he did what he believes was correct. Personally, I believe Tony is a good person, and a quality EVP, only this time, I disagree with what he did.
Something many people in the gallery forget is that a majority of the students in this University are graduate students, and they get screwed enough by the administration, just ask the law school. (I am a full-time employee in the law school). The graduate senators have a different view of the importance to them of Homecoming and more importantly how student fees are spent. To solve this problem, I hope Sen. Vitolo (NLC) attempts to pass a change to the bylaw that forces the SA to fund Homecoming. This way Program Board and Gargano’s Student Activities Center would pay for and run Homecoming and the SA would have more money for the ever-growing number of student groups.
-The writer is a fifth-year senior majoring in political science.
