Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Non-Binding Decision Makers

Last Wednesday, the GW Student Association introduced a bill that would provide support for gender-neutral housing on campus. Gender neutral housing is probably something that our school should provide for the small minority fo students that don't wish to classify themselves by a certain gender. The problem with this bill, and with the Student Association as a whole, lies when The Hatchet describes the bill in the opening paragraph of the article:
2010 Equal Housing Opportunity Act - a nonbinding resolution that would pledge support for a gender-neutral housing option for students living on campus.

A non-binding resolution. The George Washington University Student Association is spending their time working on non-binding resolutions. Instead of working on getting us more space to study or meet as student organizations, instead of working to resolve inefficiency issues with 4-Ride, or with advising, or with all of the other red tape that restricts people from doing things at GW, they have chosen grandstanding at its very worst. If someone really wished to get a policy change on this issue, they would have a meeting with the administration. If the administration was willing to listen, they would make a change. If not, a non-binding resolution is not even close to being the right way to make that change happen.
To make this inefficiency worse: The SA voted to table to the bill last week.
The Student Association needs to be working on our behalf to make changes that affect all of us, instead of wasting time on a "non-binding resolution" that has no impact and was only pursued in the first place because they take themselves too seriously and have lost sight of what it is the large majority of the students at GW actually want.
Like I said before, gender-neutral housing would be a step forward for the University. I just wish the Student Association would work hard to get things done behind the scenes, and use their meeting time to actually fight for things that they actually have the power to accomplish. Oh yeah, and when you start using terms like "non-binding resolution" and "tabling the bill" tell you that you're taking yourselves too seriously, and probably aren't getting anything of significance done.

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