It is impossible to know precisely what was expected from Whil Piavis when he was elected student body president last semester. With his pirate persona and passionate scurvy crew, student voters may have seen Piavis as a man on a mission to buck the system. On the other hand, Piavis’s election may have been representative of a general feeling amongst students that the student government is for the most part a joke.
Unfortunately for all of us, rather than implementing much needed positive changes in the SG or focusing on the few issues through which government can have a tangible positive effect on students as a whole, Piavis has been spending too much time promoting his self-described “pirattitude.”
Whil Piavis’s button campaign is a prime example of a pirate themed project students could have done without. While the buttons do actually look pretty cool, they do not improve the quality of education on campus or help to promote important student issues like University tuition and fee increases. They only serve to spread the pirate’s joke further into student culture.
It is good that the Senate Finance Committee decided to not allow Piavis to use student government money to pay for the buttons. Nonetheless, even though Piavis is not using Student Government funds to finance his buttons, he is still wasting his time on an endeavor that does not advance student interests in the slightest.
Instead of making buttons promoting a pirate’s life, Piavis could be making appointments of students to the important executive positions in which leaders could do good work for the campus community. Piavis has been lackadaisical in his role as the chief executive of the Student Government, letting an excessive number of appointments—including cabinet level appointments—lapse.
Instead of distributing superficial awards to students that need no motivation beyond their own GPA to make good grades, Piavis could be spending his time promoting important student issues at administrative and trustee levels. Tuition and fee increases should be a real hot button topic for all students on campus this year, and no amount of Piavis’s brand of pirattitude will keep tuition levels reasonable. Piavis needs to get the ball rolling, or students may find themselves paying a thousand dollars more in tuition next year…
Leave a Reply