Five bucks can buy one more semester

By Mark McGowan

It’s about time … and it’s right on time.

Dave Broustis, recycling adviser for the Student Association, has had it with the group he’s served for years. In fact, he’s so put-off with the ineffectiveness and belly-aching that goes on, he wants to know one good reason why the SA should exist.

And he’s willing to pay for it.

At Sunday’s SA meeting, Broustis offered any senator five bucks for a reason. Any takers?

To illustrate his point, Broustis gave the senators a graph called “The SA Circle.” It’s Dave’s opinion of what goes on in the SA every year—a vicious path that curves around until it begins again in September.

According to the SA Circle, the senators and officers feel elated to have been elected by a few of their peers. Soon, they feel worthless and then realize the uselessness of their body. To make themselves feel better, they pass a couple useless resolutions, but only realize their uselessness again.

So, the circle says, the senators try to pass the blame off on someone else (like Paula Radtke, Huda Scheidelman or Tanya Smith) and pull a full-blown impeachment attempt. Alas, no one ever gets impeached and the year ends with, Broustis contends, nothing accomplished.

While Broustis later said his report might have been a tad brutal, he said he realizes “that a lot of work is done in committees.”

What kind of work? It puzzles the mind.

So far, the biggest news of the SA year was the failed impeachment attempt. At the group’s first meeting of the semester, which didn’t happen until more than a month into the term, all the senators did was gripe about the botched elections.

Then, later that week, a non-senator decided to launch a petition drive against high tuition. That should be something the senate does, but apparently they decided to relegate it into their “Pass The Buck” slogan.

At their second meeting, they squabbled about who can spend their money and how it can be spent. Also, they began worrying about what to do with their elections commissioner—a problem that raged in their minds for weeks.

To make a boring story quicker, nothing much has happened. They wrestled with appointing justices to their supreme court. They plunged into the Smith impeachment debacle. And now, they’re dealing with one of their own calling them useless.

The SA is lucky, though, that Broustis warned them when he did. This is still the first semester, and it’s not over.

While no one likes to be criticized, maybe his slap in the face will serve to wake them up. This could have come at the end of another “useless” year and been something to reject at first and forget by the fall.

Hopefully, Broustis’ message will encourage the senators to use what time is left before the clock ticks 1991 to get the wheels rolling. Maybe they will put aside wasted internal spats and focus on what’s troubling the students that they’re elected to serve.

Otherwise, it’ll be just another lap around the SA Circle.