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Tuesday’s General Student Senate meeting went by a lot faster than the other ones I’ve been to this year. Despite its speedy pace, GSS still managed to pass a controversial resolution. Its purpose was to endorse the Power Vote campaign on campus. Oh, you haven’t heard of it?
From what I could gather through researching the campaign, the point of Power Vote is to motivate the youth vote to consider the energy and climate change platforms of candidates first and foremost. The first part of their platform is to recreate the job structure of America, focusing it around “green” jobs and “retooling our factories, revamping our schools and rebuilding our communities.” The immensity of this undertaking, in stark contrast with the floundering economy, makes its absurdity quite apparent.
It looks like the movement is just trying to turn young voters into single-issue voters. Just look at what they’re asking you to sign – they want young voters to make “clean, just energy a top priority in . this election.” As of this writing, 650 students on campus have signed the pledge, about 5 percent of the UMaine student body. The goal on their Web site is to get one million young voters to sign the pledge. They’re about three quarters of a million short of their goal with a week until election day.
In his opening argument for the resolution, Sen. Rob Goodwin, its sponsor, made the case for supporting the initiative without much of what I said above. He mentioned the 650 student pledges and even amended the resolution to include this fact. His argument focused more on how the initiative pertained to the senate. He literally asked the other senators to vote for his proposal because it would “make [them] look good.”
Really? It would make you look good to endorse a fringe effort on campus to elevate the importance of trivial issues instead of the ones that continually affect the lives of every student? The GSS shouldn’t have to make itself “look good” with empty endorsements; it should be able to shine on its own. It would be better for the student body if, instead of passing useless resolutions, the student senate actually did something substantial. They just had over $40,000 returned to their unallocated funds; perhaps they can do something with that.
Just before the end of the meeting, Sen. Walter Lazarz criticized this column, saying the senate has a time appropriated for students to offer opinions to their senators during the meeting and that many Senators can be contacted easily by e-mail if people have questions.
Here’s the deal: Students have better things to do on Tuesday nights than attend GSS meetings just to complain. My job here is to expound on my opinion of what happens at senate meetings. Students have a right to know about the consequences of what senate passes or doesn’t pass, and if anyone in the senate can’t handle my scrutiny, they probably shouldn’t be in office.
