Dear Wesleyan Student Assembly,
The following is a response to your recent all-campus email, entitled “money, dining, pimpology, and more…..”
In the last year, your organization has consistently managed to disappoint me, as a Wesleyan student and one of your voting constituents. The WSA’s one memorable foray into campus activism last semester was a poorly organized, inaccurately advertised, ill-conceived, unhelpful and condescending lesson on “how to be activists” in which the facilitator flatly rejected students’ requests to discuss strategy and goals. Understandably, this prompted a substantial portion of the attendees to leave soon thereafter. While halfheartedly trying to shape us into activists of your specifications, you have apparently let issues such as administrative transparency, student power in decision making, gender neutral housing, and a glut of other issues fall by the wayside. This, despite the fact that these issues were raised by hundreds of students, through direct and unmediated action, just last year, and the fact that gender neutral housing, in particular, received overwhelming support in a student referendum with the largest voter turnout in history.
It may well be that somewhere in your subcommittees, these issues are still being addressed, but we don’t hear about that. Instead, you jokingly threaten to curtail dining options, rather than perhaps discussing Wesleyan’s plans with regard to Aramark (and other dining contractors, with highly variable labor relations histories) as the new campus center approaches completion. You provide University Relations with a platform to push for more student fundraising. This takes the place of tracking where that funding goes, critically examining how the university disburses those funds, or even merely keeping in mind that, as the Wesleyan Student Assembly, your role is to represent student interests, not the interests of the Office of University Relations and the Annual Fund. You pitch a vacant (and apparently unelected) WSA position by reaching out to people who “like to be in charge” rather than, once again, remaining cognizant of your duty to represent the student body, not to lead it or take charge of it. With that sort of attitude towards student government, it’s little wonder that you give no time or space to a critical examination of your organization’s decision-making power and democratic potential within the structure of this university. It’s apparently much easier, and much more fun, to use student representation for what’s really important: creating an aloof club of “the coolest people on campus.”
And lastly, rather than increasing allocations for student groups, or allocating more resources to any number of student causes which could increase student engagement, foster community, and promote action and involvement in our school and our world, you provide us with a music service which can not only provide us with pop glorification of misogyny to our heart’s content, but is in fact the perfect thing for “getting cruncked, laid, or chilling to this weekend and this semester.” For lack of any other indication, I’ll assume you take these three activities to be the full range of acceptable student behavior.
Maybe you got this service for free, and it doesn’t come out of funding that would otherwise be available through the SBC for activities, groups, and projects. If so, it’s hardly worth congratulating yourself on for such a substantial part of your token correspondence with the student body. And in the future, you might want to decide whether the butt of your joke is A: a neatly produced stereotyped image of sexist black hypermasculinity, or B: the exploitation of women in sex work, before you start laughing.
Now, it’s entirely possible that this is all terribly unfair, that you are diligently at work at all the issues students have been hammering you over the head with for years. If so, please tell us about it, show some results, and fire your PR rep. Because if you’re doing anything worthwhile, we’re certainly never hearing about it.
Sincerely,
Bea Lake
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