I recently visited a friend who attends Brandeis University near Boston, MA.  From the moment I arrived, I was impressed with the level of student involvement and interest in their student government.  That level of excitement does not exist at USD and in order to get it to that level, I think we need to model.

Before we even get to the explanation of the model, SGA needs to take some critical steps to legitimize a new process. First, SGA should ask Professors to select a small group of respected and hard working students to form a commission that will explore problems with our current system of student governance and ways to improve it. Second, SGA should null and void the recent elections.  What happened to Marque is simply inexcusable and unfair.  He was a solid candidate and SGA should have vetted his VP candidate before they granted them permission to run.   The election was a sham and the President-"elect" has no legitimate authority with students. Third, SGA should dissolve themselves.  This shouldn't be hard or controversial.  There are only five member anyway, right (sarcasm)? No one respects SGA and no one will be upset by this move.  I think everyone agrees this is necessary. 

After SGA does these three necessary things, SGA doesn't exist, therefore, the commission of students should work to establish a new government with the goal of having elections with in the first couple of weeks during the fall year.  This, of course, means that we will not have a student government for several months, but we have to ask ourselves: do we really have one now?  The commission should make a recommendation by the end of this spring semester.

What should that recommendation look like? I call it the Brandeis Model. The model is actually very straight forward (it actually eerily resembles our Federal government). I will break it down as well as I can.

The President serves as the Executive.  He does not have any role to play within the Senate or legislative form of government.  This has several advantages. First, it allows the President to focus energy working with administrators to get things done for students. S/he does not have to waste their time running Senate meetings, which is something the VP could easily do.  Secondly, this actually gives the VP something to do.  What does the role of VP even mean in our student government?  Granted - I don't know a lot about our government but I am under the impression that it is kind of a joke position. 

The Vice President serves as the Presiding Officer over the Senate.  They conduct all Senate meetings (Of course, there is a chain of command within the Senate in case of the VP's absence).   The VP also serves as a communicator between the Senate and President.  Do you see the level of structure and organization that is already forming with only these two positions?

Although I am not completely sure, I believe the Senate serves in a similar role as SGA currently does. The thing that I think makes this model superior is that it takes the President completely out of the Senate picture.  For the past two years, each President has had a bulls-eye on his back by the Senators for whatever reason - some legit and some not. If we can separate the Senators from the President, it may allow both sides to focus on resolving issues for students rather than trying to beat one another up.  If nothing else, it is better than we currently have.

The Brandeis form of government also has a judiciary but I personally think that this branch takes too much power away from student groups.  Because the judiciary would serve mainly as a settler of disputes between student groups or students, it allows people to abuse the system and make wild claims against another system. Of course, we could develop a structure to minimize this, however, the problem here has never been student groups or students, but SGA.  Why should we spend time fixing something that is not broke?   

This is just a shell of what they do. I have only defined the key roles of any form of government, and even then, these roles need further exploration.  I think what has been presented, however, is attractive and worth further exploration. SGA needs to move quick though if they want any hope of earning back the respect of students.  Tomorrow, I will discuss what I think is truly great about the Brandies model - communication structure.  So, what does everyone think? Do we need to take drastic steps and if so, is this our model?