SGA needs a mission

Last Monday night, Barnard’s Student Government Association conducted a 45-minute council meeting, much of which was spent voting on SGA apparel. The time not spent discussing fashion was used to discuss Winter Wonderland and the Career Dinner—an events discussion that could have very easily taken place over email, rather than using up council time. At the following Engineering Student Council meeting, when the Barnard SGA representative delivered the weekly account to ESC, the most she could say was that the council had no updates, because it had spent the meeting discussing T-shirts.

It seems that the SGA meeting was a waste of its members’ time—which leads us to question the organization’s role as a representative of the student body. If the most pressing issue SGA has to discuss is designing hoodies and T-shirts for its own members, it should seriously reflect on its effectiveness as a council and what it stands for. Nothing says this better than the mission statement on SGA’s website—which is at least a year out of date. One sentence of the statement says, “SGA exists in order to enhance YOUR Barnard experience,” among other vague notions. Rather than spewing empty words and trivialities, SGA needs to focus first on actually creating a mission statement, and then creating goals to match it.

Admittedly, Barnard might have fewer issues to worry about than Columbia College or SEAS. While CCSC, ESC, and GSSC have to fight to communicate with the upper echelons of the Columbia administration, Barnard’s bureaucracy is much more accessible. But it would be foolish for us to assume that all’s well in the Barnard sphere, and that every Barnard student is completely satisfied with her quality of life.

It is precisely from these connections and accessibility to the Barnard administration that SGA has the strength to act on the student body’s needs. President Debora Spar, for example, has office hours that students can sign up for, and SGA can get in touch with its Board of Trustees more easily—something which a Columbian could only dream of. In effect, SGA is in a better position to act on issues, which is why it is all the more imperative for the student government to define its mission. If SGA is not using its potential to effect significant change in the Barnard community, and is instead deciding on T-shirts, its members should either examine how the council is being run and seriously think about what it’s doing or dissolve. If there is nothing for them to do, they may as well not exist.

If SGA actually wants to represent the student body, it needs to discuss real issues. Moreover, it needs to do so in a respectable manner and accurately reflect the student body. SGA can’t send a representative to an all-councils meeting with the only update being that it voted on SGA apparel. If SGA defined a clear purpose for itself, it would finally represent Barnard’s “strong and beautiful” students.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that SGA spent most of its meeting talking about apparel, when in fact that discussion took up about one-third of the meeting, and referred to an ESC meeting as an all-councils meeting. Spectator regrets the errors.