Shrouded in the hushed confines of the Talley Student Center Board Room, members of the University administration sat with The Pirate Captain and Senate President Forrest Hinton last week to collectively ponder the Student Government’s judiciary problem.
If you’re unfamiliar with the details of this melodrama, the University’s Judicial Board, the body that conducts hearings into allegations of student misconduct, planned to separate from Student Government at the request of its oft-maligned advisor, Paul Cousins. The proposal itself was nothing new, suggested by SG veterans before even my time, repeated here in this very newspaper six years ago and touted by a number of Senators since then. The difference this time around was that Mr. Cousins himself embraced the separation and made plans for a J-Board outside the scope of Student Government.
But with the catastrophic defeat last semester of a poorly advertised and widely misunderstood referendum which would have removed the judicial branch from the Student Body Constitution entirely, leaders of the Student Government provided ample pretext for the University administration to step in and put the kibosh on any separation plans. The administration did so, with Vice Chancellor Tom Stafford ordering everyone to sit down and review their options before proceeding with any split between the two bodies.
No one outside Holladay Hall can claim to know exactly why the University decided to get involved in this dispute, but speculation abounds. Some suspect the administration is fed up with a Student Senate regarded as pedantic. Others argue it simply looks bad to have SG officials lose a referendum and then enact the same objective through different means. Alternatively, pragmatic minds suggest it actually has nothing to do with Student Government at all. Instead they claim that the Chancellor’s Office is concerned about the appearance of impartiality in the body responsible for meting out student discipline.
All would certainly be valid concerns, but all miss the point: it’s time for the Judicial Board to go.
Ask yourself: why does Student Government exist? Not for oversight responsibility, as the SG has none. Not to effect change, as its ability to do so rests exclusively on the “soft power” of persuasion. Even the Student Government budget, the greatest tool most deliberative bodies can wield, is ultimately under the authority of the University itself.
The Student Government exists because the University wants the Student Government to exist. It’s a marketing tool. Compare N.C. State to the Walmart of higher education (or Target for you pathologically anti-Walmart people). It provides a comprehensive set of products at relatively inexpensive prices. Now imagine going to your local Walmart and finding out its electronics department doesn’t exist. Or the clothes department doesn’t exist. Or whatever section you shop in most just doesn’t exist. That’s the role Student Government fills within this University; it’s part of NCSU’s “total package,” and its absence would be noticeable.
But if it were abolished tomorrow, no one can doubt that NCSU could still continue to function. That cannot be said for the Judicial Board, because without an enforcer for academic standards our degrees would be worthless sheets of paper and the University would fail in its core educational mission. That reality alone should be sufficient justification for the separation.
There is more than that, of course. If the central purpose of Student Government is to “round out” the University’s product offerings, common sense demands it take the shape best suited to mollifying the student body it serves. An authentic, SG-bound judicial function is a natural and expected part of that equation.
Several administrators and Student Government veterans have argued we can’t create a “real” judicial branch because we simply don’t have the intellect of those people over at Chapel Hill. “We don’t have a law school,” they insist, “it can’t be done.”
Well I’ve seen the vaunted UNC-CH Student Government in action. I wasn’t impressed.
Our political science and related curricula are more than strong enough to produce leaders that can fill a judicial branch tasked with interpreting Senate legislation or similar duties. And if that’s not enough work, there’s nothing preventing the Senate from simply giving them something to do. Elections could certainly fall under judicial purview, or any number of the other bureaucracies choking the Executive Branch.
The point is that it can, and should, be done. An independent Judicial Board coupled with a reformed Student Government is a formula where everyone wins.
Send Greg your comments at [email protected].
