Nobody cares about the IU Student Association anymore. The average voting rate for the student body is now at less than 15 percent, and the voting ballot is now even easily accessible online.
So for those who perhaps don’t even know what IUSA is, it’s IU’s student government.
I say nobody cares anymore, because it would appear that at one point in time, IU’s student body was engaged in what went on in the organization’s large office on the third floor of the Student Activities Tower in the IMU.
How else could an organization be around for so long? You could blame the lack of interest on decreased student engagement overall or lack of school pride, but I argue there is something else that along the course of time has disenchanted students.
Student government is no longer for the students.
It is now an organization for those students, myself at one point included, who wish to gain a false sense of power and get a “behind-the-scenes” look at how administrators run the University.
Very little representation of student interests actually occurs. The typical student does not care, because the typical student is not represented. As we have seen with the past two elections being decided by the IU Supreme Court, the system is completely broken.
All tickets quarrel and engage in petty politics through the election season, then complain to a poorly organized Election Commission with a dysfunctional Election Code that does not allow for an election to be properly won or lost.
A properly organized student government is an important tenet of a university, especially one the size of IU.
So long as the Election Commission delays a discussion regarding the efficacy of its Election Code, all students are being robbed of representation and the opportunity to participate in a great organization. Something must be done.
Nick Laszlo
Class of 2016
