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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Where’s the SA Senate?

I recently stopped by the Student Association office to pick up the minutes of a Senate meeting. Reading the minutes only confirmed my thinking – the Senate is out of focus. It got off to a poor start when two members left this summer and transferred to Georgetown University. What does it say about GW when its elected student leaders flee?

Still, it’s no excuse. Where are all the programs we heard about? Where’s the outreach, the activism? Where’s the Senate?

In the Sept. 28 issue of The GW Hatchet, Sen. Alexis Rice (CSAS) was quoted as saying, “Resolutions inform administrators about ideas and changes that students want, but that the Senate does not have the means to implement” (“SA uses resolutions as bargaining tools).

Sen. Rice only was partially correct. A Senate resolution is only a piece of paper and once it is passed, that piece of paper goes in a file cabinet never to be seen or heard from again. I disagree with Sen. Rice when she says the Senate doesn’t have the means to implement the change. Of course the Senate has the means to bring about change, but to do so takes more than a worthless sheet of paper. It means rolling up your sleeves and doing the dirty work.

Too often the Senate gets stuck in its own self-perceived importance. Bills passed often read, “a bill to encourage this” or “a bill to encourage that.” I wish they would stop encouraging change and actually implement change.

When I was in the Senate, it drove me crazy to spend three hours debating a bill to encourage something no one outside the Senate was going to read anyway. So what’s the point? You just know the Clinton White House is petrified of the GW SA Senate supporting a bill to encourage Clinton to resign, because if there’s one thing we all know, it is that if Clinton loses the GW SA Senate, he loses America.

I remember during last year’s freshmen orientation, a student asked a multi-term senator, “What does the Student Association do?” It sounded like a fair question to me. However, the senator could not answer the question without rambling on and on.

In fact, no one in the room was able to give a clear answer to the question. This has always been the problem with the SA – it has trouble honing in on what it should do and how to go about doing it. If this year’s Senate wants to be successful, it is time to get moving.

The clock is ticking. Elections have already begun. (I know you must think I’m crazy, but the candidates already are plotting, trust me, I was there once.) Many good people are on the Senate and they are lucky to have a fine executive vice president as chairman. Therefore there are no excuses – let’s get something done, even if it means actually doing more than writing a bill and voting on it. If the Senate is serious about changing aspects of GW, then it better climb off the fourth floor tower and get down to business.

-The writer is a senior and a former CSAS undergraduate senator.

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