GUEST COLUMN: Adventures of the Understand Assembly

Luke DeCock says the sole purposeLuke DeCock says the sole purposeof student government is to keepLuke DeCock says the sole purposeof student government is to keepits devotees from pestering theLuke DeCock says the sole purposeof student government is to keepits devotees from pestering thegeneral student population.Luke DeCock says the sole purposeof student government is to keepits devotees from pestering thegeneral student population.__________________________________Luke DeCock says the sole purposeof student government is to keepits devotees from pestering thegeneral student population.__________________________________It has come to my attention that some of you readers consider student government to be ineffective, inane and -- dare we say it -- masturbatory. I had been under the impression that student government was doing exactly what was expected of it: keeping people dull enough to care about student government occupied, so as to keep them from circulating among us normal people. And as far as that goes, the UA does a pretty good job of keeping the UA freaks locked up in Chats for a couple of hours every week. Sure, there are UA members who could be useful, productive members of society, but they're so few and far between so as not to matter. And I speak here only of the UA, because -- and let's be honest here -- no one outside of organizations like SAC, SPEC, the IAA, PAC and the NEC has more than a cursory idea of what all of these groups could possibly do. But one senses a certain discontent in the halls of this university about the uselessness of the UA. People seem to feel it should be doing something. To which I say, what else could you want out of student government? Programming? I think not. Think back to junior high, when the student council budget went for, well, nothing, aside from pizza for the people involved. Maybe one dance no one went to, but I'm not even sure about that. For that matter, I don't think my high school even had a student council. We had something called "student council," but I don't recall any elections or anything one would normally associate with the words "student" or "government." It was sort of an off-the-cuff, fly-by-night operation that you could join if you wanted to, but it really didn't have any impact on the lives of anyone who wasn't involved. I realize I don't speak for everyone. Those of you who went to perfect suburban high schools with large student parking lots and active "pep clubs" probably had student councils elected via hotly contested campaigns that undertook successful programs, perhaps including canned food drives or neat-o keen parties at the mall. But, to be honest, we'd all much prefer you guys just go back to your Young Republican fund raising and leave the rest of us alone. If programs, then, are not what we expect from student government, the UA hits that one right on the button -- it's doing a great job at not producing anything tangible. I suppose that, theoretically, the UA should represent the undergraduates to the University community. This is a reasonably preposterous notion. Could any body that has a mandate derived from elections in which a minuscule proportion of the students it purports to represent even bother to vote really consider itself representative of its constituents? Or, in English, if the UA holds an election and nobody votes, does it make a sound? This state of affairs only matters because one of the scarier functions of the UA is that it represents the undergraduate population on University Council. For those of you who don't know, UC is a University body that advises the president and the provost on matters of importance. The UA has a whole mess of seats on UC. So when the UMC accused the UA of not accurately representing students on UC, you sort of had to admit it had a valid point. But the fact of the matter is that when you sort through all this alphabet soup, what you get is a whole lot of nothing. The UA is great at holding meetings, passing resolutions and giving speeches -- and not much else. This isn't necessarily bad, though. If the UA wasn't so self-occupied, it might do something that could screw things up for the rest of us. The reality of the situation is that if you grab 10 Penn students at random, nine of them -- after pleading for their lives and handing over their wallets -- will tell you they could care less about the UA. The upshot of all this commentary on the UA is the shocking conclusion that the UA plays the exact role demanded of it by students at this university. Put two and two together: no one cares about the UA, and the UA does nothing. The marriage between the UA and its supposed constituents is perfect. If you can keep anyone demented enough to get involved in student government out of public circulation, either through endless meetings, UTV13 programming or by keeping them up late at night writing angry letters to the DP, well, that's the icing on the cake.