Tuesday night was the final Student Association Senate meeting of the school year. Unfortunately, only a handful of students actually show up to our meetings and one must question why this happens. As this year’s undergraduate senator at-large, please allow me to give you an example of why this happens.

At Tuesday’s meeting, I introduced a bill to urge the University
administration to support the initiative of booking a widely-known keynote speaker – namely Michael Jordan – for Opening Convocation this fall. I did this because it is a well-known fact that many students at GW do not attend Opening Convocation, and I believe attendance would improve greatly if students had an amazing speaker to listen to next semester.

The end result was simple. J.P. Blackford, the nine-term senator, and his two puppets, Maureen Benitz and Anne Ruppel, controlled the agenda, and the bill failed.

These three graduate students were the only senators to speak against the resolution, doing a great disservice to all students at GW.

-SA Sen. Raj Parekh (U-at large)
junior