Deliberate. Stiff. Grave.
These words describe what I expected going into my first-ever DSG meeting last Wednesday night. And it was all of these things: business casual dress code, parliamentary procedure, only one Student Organization Finance Committee candidate allowed in the room at a time, strict time limits on speeches.
But it was other things, too. One member browsed an online clothing catalog for the entirety of the two-and-a-half-hour-long meeting. All the members with laptops whose screens I could see were logged onto AOL Instant Messenger-and lest we forget, they were supposed to be deciding which students should control our money.
The meeting ended with the unveiling of the first two of many "DSG morph faces"-combinations of the faces of two DSG members into a "lovechild." "Oh, this is good stuff!" President Jesse Longoria, a senior, exclaimed as one senator tried to open the files.
DSG tries to be very official, prim and proper. They call each other "Senator" and "Vice President." But at the meeting, Executive Vice President Brandon Goodwin, a senior, was the only one who clearly knew and followed parliamentary procedure.
The main purpose of the meeting was to elect members of SOFC. The elections went off without a hitch, except for one candidate. Freshman Andrew Tutt, when asked where he thought SOFC could improve, said the organization is too political and should be more autonomous and independent of DSG. He said because it controls so much money ($600,000 this year), SOFC shouldn't be elected by the DSG Senate.
Well, you can imagine the response of the DSG body. Half of their hands instantly went into the air, some even tearing their attention away from AIM to challenge the freshman. He's only been on campus for a month, what does he know about how SOFC or DSG operate? Where does he get his authority?
Well, dear senators, how about common sense? If DSG chooses the people that decide how our Student Activities Fee is spent, logically, DSG indirectly controls our Student Activities Fee. And DSG, with its elections, is a political organization. Sounds to me like SOFC could become (or-gasp!-already be) a politically influenced organization.
Needless to say, Tutt didn't get elected. And it's a pity, because he was the only candidate who mentioned something besides his experience handling money, his internship at Goldman Sachs and his fantastic time-management skills.
The other fascinating part of last week's meeting was unveiling a change to the Freshman Election By-Laws. An Executive Order-not open to debate or change at the meeting-added a new clause regarding technology. Facebook groups are "strictly forbidden," while live links to DSG polls are allowed as long as there is no text near the link promoting or denouncing any candidates.
Senior Emily Aviki, who was disqualified from the presidential run-off election last year because of a live link to the polls in her away message, said of the new rules, "I think the fact that they made it an 'order' sheds light on the absurdity of my disqualification in last year's election. I'm glad the same thing will never happen to a candidate again."
The new by-laws say "any violations will quickly be disciplined by the Election Commission and will lead to a strict punishment against the candidate's campaign privileges." This ambiguous language leaves the possibility of another debacle like last year's presidential race, in which Aviki said there was pressure to make a decision quickly, which meant "it ended up I was the scapegoat, I was the one that got hurt by the decision." But Aviki says she's happy being senior class president. "There hasn't been a day this year that I was like, 'Shoot, man, I wish I was in Jesse's shoes.' Not one day," she said.
And, well, who can blame her? With Treasurer Chris Chin's departure, an undercurrent of discontent with his performance and recent suggestions from The Chronicle that DSG might be on the verge of falling apart, Longoria's position is not an enviable one. Most students don't like the way DSG handled tailgate policy. And the future looks bleak for issues like the social scene (on- and off-campus) and students' clashes with ALE and police officers.
A week after my first meeting, I have a different set of words to describe DSG:
Disorderly. Self-important. Gibbering.
Elizabeth Rudisill is a Trinity sophomore. Her column, which focuses on Duke Student Government, runs every other Thursday.
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