Hey Brittany:
Congratulations on your recent win. Just read your Wespeak in defense of the WSA, and I just wanted to respond to a few points.
First, regarding legitimacy. Legitimacy, as a point of theory, strikes me as being about how representative the WSA, as a body, is—not whose fault that may be. There’s a great deal of voter apathy, yes. But that alone, translating, as it does, into the fact that the WSA represents under half of the total undergraduate population, is enough to prove that the WSA’s claims to legitimacy are tenuous at best. Which is to say, when it claims to speak for students, there’s serious doubt as to whether or not it can make that claim.
Second, regarding power. As you know, I served on the WSA, so I’m no stranger to how often students serve on high level committees—certainly more so than at most other institutions (though that’s neither here nor there), and certainly enough to make them involved, at some level, in high level decisions—various hiring decisions, and the new course registration system, just to name a few that I’m aware of. But on a certain level, that misses the point. Where the WSA’s power fails is right where we need it the most. The high level decisions to which the WSA is not a party, or in which the WSA’s input is ignored are often of crucial student concern. I am thinking here specifically of Chalking and of Gender Neutral Housing (which, to the best of my knowledge, is still on the agenda, but from the outside it’s difficult to see the WSA making any headway). It was my impression, while serving, that the Executive Committee often opted not to put up a stiff fight when ignored or over-ridden on such decisions, for fear of losing involvement in other high-level decision making processes if it did. As a result, the WSA’s power was most evident when not at all controversial, and least existent when ignored. And that is not the hallmark of effective representation.
Of course, the two go hand in hand. How can the WSA be powerful enough to take a stand when its representative weight is constituted by less than half the campus? Conversely, how can a body that appears not to take stands when ignored expect to incite a large voter turnout?
It’s a downward spiral, and it has to break somewhere, and I wish you the best of luck in breaking it.
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