We’ve been devoting a lot of coverage to Ted Cruz, Iran, anti-homelessness ordinances and regressive legislation concerning who can use what bathroom. Today, let’s direct our attention locally to Santa Fe College.
Recently, Santa Fe was declared the best community college in the country, receiving $800,000 as a reward for its overall excellence as well as the institution’s high graduation and transfer rates.
It’s a prestigious honor and something Santa Fe and its students should be extremely proud of. Lurking just behind this good news, though, is the cesspool of unprofessionalism and ineptitude that is the Santa Fe Student Government. Student Body elections end today. Even though the president and vice president ticket is unopposed, students should take this opportunity to start getting involved in SG. Because it needs an intervention.
Incompetence and infighting in the Student Senate and other vital SG organs is making a mockery of the democratic process and ruining opportunities for Santa Fe students in the process. At the same time, a largely apathetic electorate is choosing not to vote, consigning Santa Fe to at least another term of shoddy government.
The state of Santa Fe SG is truly alarming. Last year, former Student Body President Michael Chartier and Student Senate President Jeremy Pierce had a physical altercation that arose from an argument about whether Pierce had threatened senators. Santa Fe officials essentially placed a mutual restraining order on the two, and Chartier was later dismissed from his position after a disciplinary hearing. This caused a rift among Santa Fe senators, who twice tried and failed to impeach Pierce.
Part of the difficulty arose from SG’s endemic problem meeting quorum; throughout this semester, several important SG duties have been postponed because senators couldn’t be bothered to show up to — or stay at — meetings. They’ve deferred multiple budget requests from clubs and, because the SG treasurer played hooky, even the 2015-16 budget itself. The Senate floor has become an arena where senators take each other on in petty rivalries, threatening to gut funding for each other’s clubs, impeach each other’s allies, lower minimum Senate GPA requirements and everything else — except govern. The drama is so trashily overblown that SG has been compared to an “interesting season of ‘Bad Girls Club.’”
In this week’s elections, the candidates for president and vice president are running unopposed. The treasurer position has two candidates, but one failed to show up to a debate. Nobody is running for chief justice. Voters were enticed with free pizza, which worked until it was all eaten. If this were the government of a country, it’d be called a failed state. By now, some mustachioed guy in khaki fatigues and aviator sunglasses would have stepped in and declared himself President for Life. Luckily for us, Santa Fe doesn’t have a military filled with disaffected colonels — instead, it’s up to the students to take charge and hold their whacked-out SG accountable for what it does. So, Santa Fe students: Please go vote today. Or, hell, even join SG in some capacity. Your government needs you.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 3/25/2015]
