Student Government does not represent the student body

I’m a normal member of the Carnegie Mellon Undergraduate student body, and when I give my opinions here, you should assume that the entire student body agrees with me. I was insulted when I picked up the last issue of The Tartan (as I (and legions of others) do every week) and read this in the article “Senate discusses funding, elections, student outreach”:

Last year, student elections saw a voter turnout of 3 percent of undergraduate students […] Undergraduate Student Senate chalked it up to lack of communication and lack of care from undergraduate students about their university.

I emphasize “lack of care from undergraduate students about their university.” As if the most important part of Carnegie Mellon is its Undergraduate Student Government! What a self-important view from StuGov. I invite the representatives to do some soul searching, and consider if students might actually not care about the elections because they can tell that the representatives don’t care about them. I care about Carnegie Mellon for my own personal reasons that I don’t have to disclose here, but I can proudly state that I have never once cared about the Student Government, no matter how much they may claim that they selflessly do for me.

The Student Government has not given any good reasons for the general student body to care about them, and now seems upset that voter turnout is so low. In fact, assuming their attempts to increase turnout fail (as these attempts are wont to do), I expect that over 20 percent of all voters will themselves be candidates. If you want more information as to how this number was derived feel free to email me. With the situation as it stands, even the actual Administration of Carnegie Mellon University can tell that StuGov doesn’t actually represent the students and can dismiss them out of hand.

The Student Government website has an octopus chart dividing StuGov into three categories: Legislative, Executive, and Other Committees. The Legislative branch consists of the Graduate Student Assembly (irrelevant to half of the student body) and the Undergraduate Student Assembly (irrelevant to the entire student body). The Executive branch contains only the Director of Finance and the Director of Organizations due to the Legislative branch’s autogolpe in 2023 that removed the offices of President and Vice President. The Other Committees branch describes the “other main two standing committees within student government,” the Student Dormitory Council (who allegedly committed Buggy Fraud) and the highly controversial Activities Board.

Nevertheless, I voted in this year’s elections, as I do every year. I guess this shows to the illustrious Senators that I’m one of the good plebeians. By the time this article comes out, the voting period will be over, and maybe you, the reader, will have voted too. I doubt it though.

Here’re the candidates that I voted for:

I wasn’t impressed by either candidate for Director of Finance. Anybody who thinks that I’ll be swayed by a photo of Mark Cuban or their passion for “effective allocation of resources to student organizations” is clearly not well adjusted, so I thus needed to vote No Confidence.

I was dismayed by the lack of a public platform from Director of Organizations candidate Amanawit Assefa. As an informed voter, I could not in good conscience vote for her, and as she was the only candidate running, I thus needed to vote No Confidence.

I would have voted for Emma Gelman for last name related reasons, but as a student in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences I am disallowed from voting for CFA Undergraduate Student Senators. Hopefully she won. As I don’t believe in the concept of college specific Undergraduate Senators, I thus needed to vote No Confidence down the ticket.

I believe that a student government can theoretically be a good thing. Big things have been happening on college campuses, and if our current representatives can’t even wrangle Activities Board, I don’t see why Student Government should deserve me giving them even one more thought.