I am Not SGA (and You Can Too!)

Samuel Ellis
Pi Kappa Alpha

I’m really not that involved with SGA.

I supported a campaign freshman year. But it was really just a blind effort to get involved on campus or help out a friend or something… I can’t really remember. In any instance, once that election’s results came back, I sort of just jumped ship on campus politics. It was by no means a bad campaign, nor did I have any qualms with its candidates or their modi operandi. I jumped ship because I saw, firsthand, not what SGA failed to do, but what it was prevented from doing.

Believe me when I say I was, and still sort of am, as disillusioned by SGA and as discouraged from voting as you probably are. At some point after that campaign freshman year, I threw in the proverbial towel, lost whatever efficacy I felt regarding student government, and gave up on ever expecting any sort of consequence, good or bad, from my vote. Despite Journey’s urging, I just stopped believing. Which is why, when asked to work on one of the campaigns this year, I was fully prepared (and even a little excited) to say, “uhhhhhhhhh YOU’RE GOOD BREW.”

But I didn’t hear insincere promises of new, fratty/shiny things that would definitely make my day-to-day more convenient. In fact, I didn’t really hear promises at all.

Instead, they outlined a plan to engage a force that has kept the student body, for longer than I could even guess, from realistically making those kinds of promises. It’s not the administration, nor is it Jimmy Cheek, nor is it some suit-clogged conference room conspiring against the student body as they incrementally rack up tuition, one fraction of a percent at a time (though that sort of cartoony target would make campaigning a whole lot easier).

Rather, it’s an amalgamation of constraints, all structural in nature, that keep us from working in truly harmonious reciprocity with our school and its administrators. Simply put, there’s a synergy that ought to exist among the students, student government, and administration that just doesn’t right now, and if we as students are to try to further our interests at ALL, fixing that one problem needs to be the first step.

Make no mistake – SGA wants to give out all the goodies. And each campaign seeks to improve Greek life in one way or another – of this I am sure. But before we get around to improving fraternity row and Laurel Hall parking, combating frat stigma in the Judicial Affairs office, or providing safe transportation to the lovely new Sorority Village, there are structural changes to be made.

I’m a senior. I graduate in May and whatever the outcome of next week’s election (er, rather, the week after next), I won’t really be affected. But I feel compelled. So if you share my concern; if you envy Florida and Alabama and Georgia for their extensive, cohesive, well-funded, structurally sound and complex student governments; and if you want the representation, transparency and service you’ve been promised year after year but just haven’t been given…

Then vote. Just vote. Review each campaign and make an informed decision. But be sure your candidates’ plan of action has the potential to give you what you want and deserve, because otherwise, the constraints that have so traditionally enjoyed a hold on our student government’s ability to act will only become tighter and more prohibitive over time.

Oh, and enjoy the free T-shirts and pizza. 

Samuel is a senior studying political science and English. You may contact him at sellis11@utk.edu.