Has it ever been “your” Student Assembly?
The September 5 editorial in The Flat Hat entitled “It’s still your Student Assembly” is, at best, a thinly veiled, SA-aggrandizing guilt trip designed to do some damage control in response to the missteps of former SA Vice President Zach Pilchen (’09).
Allow me to explain.
Katie Dixon (’09) is the author of the piece, a political appointee in the Pilchen / Hopkins and Hopkins / Pilchen administrations. Ms. Dixon never mentions this in her op-ed, however, referring to herself simply “as a member of the Student Assembly executive.” I suppose the readers of her piece wouldn’t care to know that the only reason she is involved in the SA executive is explicitly because of her relationship with the once-famed — and now infamous — SA ticket.
Despite Mr. Pilchen’s actions, Ms. Dixon argues, it is the apathetic, uninformed students who are as much at fault as he is for the general failings of the SA. “We, as students, have failed,” she says. “Maybe as much as Pilchen has failed us”:
Pilchen certainly disillusioned us with trust and will continue to face consequences for his actions…but he is not the SA, and our immediate concern for the integrity and honesty of the entire SA is almost as reprehensible.
Over 70 percent of students who voted in last spring’s SA presidential election cast a ballot for Hopkins and Pilchen who were running on a slew of beliefs and initiatives from co-educational sexual assault prevention programs for extended orientation to increased efforts to make our campus more environmentally sustainable. We voted based on the assumption that we trusted their treatment of the events surrounding former College President Gene Nichol’s resignation, and their help in moving Steer Clear from Greek life to its own entity. They also made the student voice heard to an unparalleled degree in the city of Williamsburg through voter drives and city council debates on campus.
Hopkins and Pilchen made the SA accessible — they did their best to make it “our” SA. We overwhelmingly neglected our half of the bargain when we failed to become involved with their initiatives, only perking up during scandals or high points of press coverage.
Ms. Dixon is being disingenuous at best if she truly believes that we — the democratic electorate of the Student Assembly — do not have a legitimate interest in “perking up,” as she puts it, during times of significant SA conflict.
It seems to me that she is nothing short of a Pilchen apologist, attempting to reach out to the student body to try and minimize the backlash of his actions. Perhaps she is doing this on behalf of Ms. Hopkins and Mr. Pilchen, to both of whom she is ultimately indebted for her position in the SA. Regardless, The Flat Hat comment boards seem to indicate, ever stronger, that a Pilchen expulsion via an Honor Council investigation is the only acceptable route — even in spite of his resignation.
Moreover, the moral equivalency Ms. Dixon attempts — that between Pilchen’s wrongdoing and students’ general lack of interest in the ins and outs of the SA — is completely erroneous:
In all honesty, they didn’t fail you.
Pilchen’s actions are inexcusable, but so is our apathy. The SA is play government only as long as we refuse to break in and become energized.
“They” — Madam President Valerie Hopkins and now-former Vice President Zach Pilchen — DID fail us. Both of them. Their mutual inability to follow SA code and fix immediate problems with inconsistencies and malfeasance regarding the SA debit card is what is “inexcusable,” not students’ apathy. I find it insulting that she is attempting to guilt-trip the student body into caring more about the College’s very own “play government,” which I’ll address further in a moment.
I was half expecting Ms. Dixon to use the famed Nichol soundbite from last spring, “Apathy has little to suggest itself,” to somehow bolster her argument. Problems in syntax aside, this is an argument that has no hope of being made with an angry electorate which has both the right and a very valid reason to demand accountability.
I myself am not in the Student Assembly, but I have many friends who have been or who currently are. I think it’s fair to say that as someone in the campus media I’m generally more familiar with the SA’s operations than the average student. And I could not disagree more with Ms. Dixon when she says that the SA will cease to become “play government” simply when the student body becomes “energized.”
The SA — as with many forms of actual governmental politics — is fueled by arrogance, a hunger for power, and a general pomposity which enables the individuals in question to run for these offices (and write these op-eds) in the first place. I would be the first to admit that I probably fit the SA stereotype, but I chose to go the media route instead.
And here’s a question. (This is not rhetorical or sarcastic, I would genuinely like to know) — what has Ms. Dixon accomplished in her nearly two years “as a member of the SA executive”?
[NCF]
We believe Ms. Dixon wrote an exceptional piece that shed light on a tumultuous campus situation
Hm, thats very interesting… I doubt Nick Fitzgerald took the time to find out that Katie Dixon has worked tirelessly for the past year and a half to frame the co-educational sexual assault program Zach and Val charged her with creating. Katie has met with numerous campus groups (including 1 in 4 AND Every Two Minutes) as well as with several campus sexual assault educators to make sure that this program will be the best it can be and serve the William and Mary community to the full degree. Considering that this co-ed program would be the first of its kind, I don’t think its logical or practical to expect that it would just magically appear after only one full year of crafting.
For someone who is not in the Student Assembly and who is relying on “friends” for information on the situation, it takes balls, Mr. Fitzgerald, to simply sit in your dorm room and rant, making comments that are not productive and that no one particularly cares to hear. What the SA really does need - in order to fix some of the problems it currently faces - is the actual participation of students to ensure that it does accurately represent the entire student population. In times of executive misconduct, it would be both a shame and pointless to complain but not do anything to fix and improve an already negative situation. But on second thought, its a good thing YOU chose the media route or the SA would be even more congested with arrogance than you claim it already is.
Maybe if students were a little less apathetic they would have fielded an alternative to Zach and Val that they could support. I feel a little to blame for the situation because I fully intended to vote against Zach and Val until I saw that their opponents were, and this was incredibly hard to believe, most likely going to be even worse for the community than they were. I heard this complaint echoed over and over on campus, yet none of us had the guts to stand up and run against them to improve our school.
It’s people like Katie Dixon, who are passionate about campus issues and work to solve them not to build their own resumes but to improve students’ lives, that make W&M an amazing community. And it’s people like Zach and all of us who allowed him to once again achieve a position of power who hold W&M back.
I would like to say, in regard to your question, that Ms. Dixon has accomplished much already, and will continue to make strides this year. As a member of the same “SA executive” I have worked closely with her for the two years she and I have been involved with the Assembly. She has worked tirelessly on a co-educational sexual assault program, as well as overseeing the development of programs targeting the male and female Greek communities. To say that her involvement in the SA is strictly due to her relationship with Valerie and Zach is offensive. She has been an integral part of projects that will make this campus safer, and it is not only irresponsible journalism, but simply rude, to demean that. To be fair, I do take issue with some some of what Ms. Dixon has written, but her involvement in the SA and the work she has done should be separate from her remarks in the student newspaper. So if you want to pick on Katie Dixon, you’d better come at her with more than this article, because she is way, way out of your- and this shitty newspaper’s- league.
Just so I am completely clear with everyone who reads or hears about my previous post regarding Katie Dixon’s (’09) piece in The Flat Hat:
I did not intend to insinuate that Valerie Hopkins (’09) or Zach Pilchen (’09) put Katie Dixon up to writing her op-ed; rather, I found the fact that she failed to mention she was both a Pilchen and Hopkins appointee to be an egregious and very relevant omission. I apologize completely for attempting to insinuate anything other than this point. I do not believe — and, furthermore, have no evidence to support the idea — that either Mr. Pilchen OR Ms. Hopkins had Ms. Dixon write this piece for either of their benefit, and if it came across otherwise, I am sorry.
I believe that the rest of my argumentation — that regarding her attempted moral equivalency between students’ apathy towards the SA and Mr. Pilchen’s misappropriations — is still clear and fact-based, and I stand by it completely.
http://blogs.vainformer.com/?p=88
The link to the above post.
Well said Nick. The SA is in disarray, and I think we can thank an electoral system that yields majorities greater than any enjoyed by Slobodan Milosevic for the situation. Entrenched power breeds corruption.