This is my fourth year in the ASG Senate. Why have I stayed involved? Shouldn't I have known better after the first year?
There's more than a hint of truth to the perennial criticism ASG faces from the student body.
Senate, comprised of 51 senators from all walks of campus, should have a more active and effective approach to campus issues, they believe.
I think students confuse Senate's representative and legislative role with the over-arching, enacting machinery of ASG.
The purpose of Senate is quite simple: Give a representative body the framework to voice its concerns on items brought before it.
It is just as simple in practice as it is in theory.
Legislation is brought to Senate for consideration until, through debate, a decision is reached. Senate is supposed to be filled with debate and invective because senators are supposed to represent their constituents' interests aggressively.
Details trivial to a bill's sponsor may be important to other people on campus, and this is one way of ensuring those needs are addressed.
It is up to the rest of ASG, often working directly with senators, to bring these things to fruition.
Admittedly, senators should be doing more. They should be more engaged in pursuing the needs of their constituents. Senate is just a body — it is up to individual senators to work beyond Senate and involve themselves.
Allowing (nay, encouraging) everyone to voice their opinions is an inherently inefficient process, but one that has improved dramatically since 2008.
During my freshman year, Senate was essentially live theater. It was a spectacle filled with politically motivated resignations and self-righteous indignation. Long rants were made on arcane or inane points mattering to no one, yet fought to the death. Longstanding rivalries often surfaced on the Senate floor. It was wondrously entertaining and not particularly useful.
2012 sees a comparatively placid Senate void of animosity. Senators work together and do not use political tools for dubious purposes. With fewer contentions, senators can focus on other goals.
Whether alone, in groups,or alongside ASG committees, many senators are working on important issues like off-campus housing, increasing student group storage space and putting rentable chargers in the library.
They have the training and resources that enable them to pursue issues on their own accord. In truth, these are not things that Senate is doing; students are using the framework Senate provides to achieve their own goals.
The inefficiencies of Senate are necessary evils existing to guarantee adequate representation of the student body. A senator needs enough initiative to pursue these goals outside of the strict framework Senate provides.
If this sense of personal engagement was found in every senator, ASG could be very different.
Were this any school other than NU (where tremendous leadership is in such abundance), Senate likely would have fallen apart years ago.
Instead, we are able to rely directly on the resourcefulness of the student body to find projects worth working on.
Wilson Funkhouser
Speaker of the Senate
Associated Student Government
All opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and do not reflect the views of The Daily Northwestern. If you would like to respond to the column, you may comment below, email the columnist or submit a 300-word letter to the editor to forum@dailynorthwestern.com.
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