On Tuesday, Muhlenberg students elected Karlee Makely as the next SGA president.
Last week, The Weekly met with three of the presidential candidates for a question and answer session. We asked the candidates about key issues they would need to address, as well as their general vision for the school.
As a staff, we were impressed with the professionalism and serious solutions offered to our questions in last week’s interviews. In a process that is generally described as a popularity contest, it was refreshing to see an appropriate level of thought dedicated to this part of the elections.
For last year’s election, SGA increased the campaigning period from one week to two and held a ‘meet and greet’ session prior to the election. We praised the new efforts, but concluded that they still left interested students with an insufficient amount of information or time to make an educated decision. It was our hope that SGA would continue on a path towards transparency throughout their election processes.
Unfortunately, this was not the case.
There was no ‘meet and greet’ this semester and the per- sonal statements were emailed to the student body the night before, leaving little opportunity for students to actually educate themselves about the candi- dates. Moreover, one presidential candidate’s statement was a ten-word sentence apparently repeated to look like the album cover of “The Life of Pablo,” a Kanye West album; another statement was an emoji-filled riddle.
Of course, we recognize that very few students on campus actually read these statements and so an attention-grabbing entry may attract name recognition if the student actually votes. But that’s not the point — the startling lack of professionalism given towards what should be a serious election is.
And yet, with respect to the representative component of the election, no amount of campaigning or humorous statements would have mattered — there are 22 representative seats and only 20 students who were actually on the ballot. They will all serve on the General Assembly by virtue of running unopposed, and SGA will then need to fill the empty seats at a special meeting in January.
So if Tuesday’s election was — at least in some respects — meaningless, why use our editorial to address it? Because local politics matter, and it’s impossible to get more local at Muhlenberg than SGA.
If SGA truly wants, as all presidential candidates who we spoke with indicated, to become more than just a bank, the aforementioned lack of professionalism needs to be ad- dressed; students may come to utilize SGA’s other spheres of influence if they trust that the request will be addressed appropriately.
Still, Muhlenberg’s student body is not innocent either. When constituents don’t care about their government or fail to exercise their right to vote, serious concerns can go unaddressed and a supposedly representative body serves only the interests of the elected.
But our call-to-action appears to be a catch-22: we’ve tasked SGA representatives with improving professionalism and transparency for the potential reward of the student engagement they seek while also cri- tiquing students for not engaging with SGA in any serious manner. So how do we resolve this?
Just as local politics matters, so does local media. Regardless of what actions SGA decides to take in the coming term, we’ll continue to push for transparency and to support student engagement opportunities.
After all, for an organization that controls thousands of dollars of student money, ensuring a responsive and successful SGA is something we should all be able to support.