We go to print this week with student senate elections in full swing and, while the timing of the polls’ prevents us from reporting the winning candidates in this edition, it seems worth turning to the single most important task before our officers as they take office: finding meaningful ways to broaden outreach efforts to the students they represent.
ASMSU, like all student governments, faces an uphill battle in convincing its constituents of its relevancy. Between studying, socializing and working part-time jobs in the futile battle against student debt, most of us have plenty to worry about without adding civic engagement to the mix. While a shame, that’s a fact of our campus life — and the primary reason ASMSU’s voter turnout has averaged merely 15 percent in the recent past.
Unlike many of its peers across the nation, however, ASMSU — particularly the senate — plays a significant role in MSU’s campus community. Its budgeting process directs a substantial amount of student fee monies to programs ranging from the Procrastinator Theatre to this publication. Additionally, as I wrote last week, its leaders have made huge strides towards better representing student concerns at an administrative level in recent years.
However, ASMSU’s representation tends to be narrow and deep, with a handful of heavily-involved students putting a tremendous amount of effort into providing services and lobbying administrators. While the dedication of that leadership elite is both essential and admirable, student government must broaden that scope if it seeks to truly represent the entirety of the student voice.
It is, after all, not so much in depth of individual involvement as breadth of impact that student government has the most potential to change our campus for the better. Our senators must look to not only sell their fellow students on the value of civic engagement in fostering a meaningful college experience, but also work to gather and implement our student body’s best ideas. Through human connection, they must work to lower barriers to participation.
Historically, our representatives have fallen short on those counts, something this year’s redistricting provides an opportunity to change. Now representing academic colleges, the senators entering and continuing their service this week have the chance to experiment, charting a better path for those who will follow them.
Where student government has relied on impersonal emails to communicate, our leaders should focus instead on face-to-face engagement. Senators should pledge to spend a half-hour of their time each week reaching out to students in the SUB or the common spaces frequented by members of their college. No single change would do more to increase ASMSU’s value.
It is tempting for student senators to revel in belonging to the leadership elite, satisfying themselves with merely being ‘in-the-know.’ They must remember that their role is in equal part to bring those conversations back out to the broader student body, fostering the grassroots civic discourse necessary for a healthy campus community.
