Student Senate makes plans, spends money and provides students with leadership experience, but they seriously need to reconsider the purpose of the legislation they take the Senate Meeting time to pass. The R 47 Advising Review bill, while possesses a purposeful name, is superfluous in its entirety. Everyone, including the senators, knows advising is a problem, so Student Government should have made their bill more purposeful.

Within the first line, the bill makes the senate look ridiculous: “An act to encourage a comprehensive review of the University’s current advising system.” The Roundtable meeting on Oct. 13 determined advising was an issue and thus the Chancellor’s Liaison Meeting on Oct. 27 brought out experts from across the University to discuss this. This meeting determined changes needed to occur, it didn’t take a Student Senate recommendation to get things started.

They haven’t really created any recommendations with this bill and haven’t gained any ground. If anything, they have taken a couple of steps back. Their response was slow and waiting almost a month and a half to declare something a problem goes to show that bureaucracy exists even within the student version of government.

Once Student Government finds out a problem, they should recognize it, but also investigate it. A second follow up bill was mentioned at the Senate meeting that will offer more recommendations that R 47 didn’t include, but that bill won’t be ready until the spring. Although spending time on a bill is great and putting work into it should produce results, the students shouldn’t have to wait that long to see solid recommendations from Student Government.

Student Government did a great job rehashing the consensus that was not only determined at the Chancellor’s Liaison meeting, but the Roundtable meeting prior to that in October. The nine senators listed lots of grievances, but no solid recommendations. If they knew some of the problems, they could have suggested some solutions or sought out people to target and get things moving. These senators have essentially said nothing if they cannot get anything done.

Student Senate should be good at using the resources of the University. By functioning as a body of senators, they assure everyone’s voice can be heard but also sought, and by being leaders they should be able to divide and conquer and utilize the faculty and administration to gain insight into issues. Students and the University are not looking to be wowed with political jargon, they want to see action and results.