COLUMN: Abolish the UA

From Jordana Horn's "in Possibility," Fall '94 These lofty statements changed the course of history -- and to use them with regard to students' off-again, off-again relationship with the University's Undergraduate Assembly may seem melodramatic. But surely there must come a time when intellectual people such as those that populate the University can see a gross miscarriage of responsibility -- and, as the sages said, if not now, when? Surely, students had hope that the UA would rouse itself from its slumber of ineptitude back in February of 1993, when students formed the Coalition for Responsive Government, a slate of officers who ran for the UA wanting to "change things." Unlike their predecessors, they looked for student opinions, through surveys and acting as a forum for ideas (by the way, this is not meant to deify the Coalition; their greatness was purely on a relative scale). Students turned out the vote in the election, and the results reflected both pessimism and optimism: only nine of 17 incumbents were brought back by the students, and the Coalition gained 10 UA seats. Somehow, the optimism got lost, and the UA found itself reimmersed in a quagmire of inactivity or reaction -- countless letters drafted to countless administrators, with the barest minimum of results. In the aftermath of 1993's racially polarizing events on campus, the UA experienced tremendous -- and understandable -- difficulty in finding a coherent voice and vision that plagues the body to this day. This lack of leadership made the UA turn inward, further developing and enhancing its polarities. This tradition has continued to the breaking point of this past Sunday's meeting, in which several members of the UA went so far as to attempt to impeach UA chair Dan Debicella for his lack of coherent moral vision. Even Debicella himself admitted that he "misled the body on certain occasions," equivocating to retain some degree of balance on what is a rapidly sinking, if not already long-sunken, vessel. But the UA's leaders could not even follow through on this last-ditch attempt to save their faltering institution. Even the powerful issue of impeachment, like so many others, was a heated reaction to events which in and of themselves indicated a problem. That is to say, the UA's reaction to problems within itself was stronger than its reaction to the problems and issues of the student body -- but even this idea was not followed through to its logical conclusion. The UA's self-perpetuating insularity is reflected in each and every meeting's winding trail of parliamentary procedure, but perhaps most so in light of the recent issue of closed-door meetings. According to the UA's own constitution, any gathering of more than a quorum (13 of 25 UA members) is considered an official meeting, and all official meetings are open to any member of the University's student body. Yet, in recent meetings, the UA has chosen to spend its time trying to exclude the public from meetings -- not that any members of the public go near these meetings, with the exception of The Daily Pennsylvanian reporters, but it's the idea that counts. After all, the idea is that the UA represents the students, and that the people who elected the UA into office have every right to attend meetings. The UA, however, sees such intrusions of the press as "poor publicity," and believes that it has the right to close the door when airing out its own dirty laundry. Only when pushed to recognize the wording of their own constitution did they acknowledge that they did, in fact, have some responsibility to their constituents. It is bitterly humorous to have to fight for the right to attend a UA meeting where no rights would be fought for, and to have to remind the UA that it is, ideally, supposed to be representing someone. In light of these facts it is surely long past time for the University's student body to get off its collective ass and do something about the fact that its student government neither represents students' concerns nor governs effectively. This is the only way to resuscitate student input in what ought to be a student-centered University. But the ultimate, ridiculous irony of the situation is that this will never occur. Because no one finds it appalling that their own student government does absolutely nothing. Because, in a self-perpetuating and masturbatory cycle of spending words and time on accomplishing nothing, the UA has effectively lost not only the trust of the student body that it does not serve, but the interest of those students. Rather than exemplifying the progressive idealism of change, the UA transmits the virus of its own inactivity and cynicism to the students it allegedly represents. The Undergraduate Assembly as a collective feels little to no obligation to the student body at large. The administration feels little to no respect for the superficial debates of the UA. But worst of all, the student body could not care less what the UA does, since they so often do nothing -- and even that, they do poorly. Jordana Horn is a senior Communications and English major from Short Hills, New Jersey, and Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. in Possibility appears alternate Tuesdays.