[2080] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: [Mit-talk] Separating threads: Student Committee on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Shaw)
Mon Jul 10 17:10:39 2006
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:10:05 -0400
From: "Michael Shaw" <mshaw@mit.edu>
To: "Chris Rezek" <crezek@alum.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20060710160817.04c02078@po10.mit.edu>
Cc: mit-talk@mit.edu
Errors-To: mit-talk-bounces@mit.edu
> If policy work takes time (it does) and if the time of students is
> limited (it is) and if some work can be done by staff and not by
> elected officials (it can) then it seems that the overall
> effectiveness of the UA (and the grades of its officials) would be
> improved by greater staff support.
Yes, policy work takes time. Yes, students' time is limited. Yes, some
work could be done by paid staff. I don't see how it immediately
follows that the effectiveness of the UA can be improved by greater
staff support.
I'm a student. I pay a mandatory student life fee, to support student
activities on campus. One could argue that student activities
shouldn't live off of this mandatory fee and instead should ask
students to pay membership fees in a market-based system, just as the
argument has been made for campus dining. I will neither speak for or
against this. In finboard, at least activities compete for money in
what resembles a competitive system.
The UA, as a government group, doesn't have to go through this
competitive process to support its priorities. Because of that, I
think a careful scrutiny of where they spend their money is in order.
For open disclosure, I'm a member of the ASA right now. If you ask me
as a member of the ASA, would my life be made easier if there were
staff to support our group, my answer would be yes. However, as a
student who would have to pay for that staff out of my student life
fee, I think its a bad idea. What we would be doing is saying that the
busywork associated with government office should be paid for equally
by all students, instead of being the obligation of the office-holder.
We elect these people partially for their willingness to do that work,
and part of the price of holding any student office is that you have
to contribute your share of busywork. I realize that many folks on
this list might have a different opinion, but the goal of student
government is not to make the officers' grades better, but to improve
the lives of the student body as a whole.
> For example, I would rather the nominations committee spend its time
> interviewing students, rather than splashing posters all over
> campus. The former must be done by students. The second can be done
> by paid labor. Another NomComm example - processing and organizing
> applications can be done by staff, while designing the application
> should be done by students.
Yes, staff could poster campus. But why should I, as an MIT student,
pay staff to poster campus? If the nominations committee members want
a message to get out to campus, they can poster just as easily as
anyone else at MIT who wants to poster. If a student group came to
finboard and asked for money to pay staff to poster campus, they would
be laughed away, and I think we should hold our government groups to
the same level of commitment to their jobs--if they want the message
to go out that much, they can poster themselves.
Student government types like us, no matter how much we might think
it, are no more busy than anyone else at MIT. We should hold
ourselves to that same standard we would expect of everyone else.
Just my two cents,
Michael
-------------------------------------------------
Michael Shaw
MIT, Class of 2007
E-mail: MShaw@MIT.edu
AIM: MshawatMIT
Cell: (917) 841 -- 8863
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