Every election cycle, Student Government repeats the same promise to represent students and address problems that deliver real, meaningful improvements to student life. At inauguration, I remember Vice President for Student Affairs and Academic Support Rex Tolliver telling the newly elected officials that past solutions would not solve today’s problems.
As a newly elected student representative and an engineer, it was a notion that stuck with me — the idea that Student Government must adapt its efforts to reflect the current needs of the student body. The executives-elect reinforced this message in their speeches, pledging to confront today’s challenges and advocate for students. And these wonderful promises were met with thunderous applause from the newly elected representatives.
Yet, when we take a step back and look at not what Student Government says it is doing but instead what Student Government is actually doing as representatives, the rhetoric and the daily experiences of students are at odds. Perhaps ignoring what we see and hear are the first steps to achieving true enlightenment — for we are simply plebs and simply can’t comprehend the greatness of our leaders.
Yet, Student Government's failure to meet its goals and promises has nothing to do with a lack of direction or meaning in its laws and principles. No, the problem is that those trusted with the mission of serving the students have abandoned the mission. Instead, they have chosen to make wholly self-serving decisions that leave students worse off than before, without even a pause for those they represent.
Nowhere is this failure to represent the average student more obvious than in the records of your student senators' handiwork. During the fall 2025 semester, 48% of the allotted 50 senatorial seats did not pass a single piece of signed legislation — not one effort to improve student life or honor a campaign promise. So little care is given to the student experience that these representatives did not even so much as take the easy route of co-sponsoring someone else’s bill, a task that amounts to a singular email in most cases.
Our shrewd representatives fought hard to win their seats — made the broadest of promises and sold us the world — yet, once they arrived in office, the same tired pattern we see in real politics emerged. Those big promises made during the campaign become silence and dithering once they’re in the driver’s seat.
But even among the senators who did participate, the effort seen hardly counts as even showing up. Thirty percent of senate seats sponsored just one piece of signed legislation. Just six senators wrote three or more signed pieces. That means 11 senate seats are doing more work than the bottom 75%, leaving the others to dither around and occupy a seat that is just resume fluff for them.
Of the 80 pieces of signed legislation for this fall 2025 semester, nearly seven in ten are recommendations to the university. So what, then, are the few active representatives recommending of the university? Well, they’ve been representing the students with useful pieces of course.
They’ve passed legislation to create an alumni network exclusively for Student Government alumni — what a great use of our tuition dollars. Ah, you aren’t in Student Government? Well, they’ve also got a bill to give ROTC cadets free parking — the best way to represent all of their voters, certainly. My bad, not in ROTC either? Don’t worry, they also found time to request wall clocks for classrooms, as if telling time were one of the great crises facing students. Oh, does none of that apply to you? Maybe you can try a new hobby — I’ve heard kicking rocks is popular these days.
Ideally, these recommendations would tackle the pressing challenges students confront every day. Yet, Student Government has become remarkably efficient at producing documents that look like action while accomplishing nothing. Meanwhile, students are dealing with real, tangible problems: parking shortages caused by oversold permits, the deteriorating quality and overcrowding of on-campus housing, inconsistent funding for student events, and a course registration process that feels designed to punish students.
Students facing these negligible issues will be thrilled to learn about all the important work Student Government has been doing for them — free beverages for the students as a consolation prize for a useless, ineffective student government. Of course, anyone who has actually struggled with these problems will be relieved to know their representatives are prioritizing free parking for their friends, raising college fees, making grammatical tweaks to the Student Government rules, and prioritizing funding for Student-Government-friendly organizations.
The Student Government Constitution states, “The legislative powers of Student Government shall be vested in a Student Senate, and its acts shall have binding effect on all Student Government bodies.” Yet authority without action is nothing. To hold power and refuse to use it for the good of others is to betray the very purpose of the role.
When almost half of your elected senators do nothing, and the others focus on internal housekeeping or helping their friends rather than pursuing meaningful reforms, Student Government ceases to be a representative institution at all. It becomes a popularity club where you are not invited.
Students deserve better. They deserve student representatives that are student-first. What they have instead is a governing body where the majority contributes nothing and the student body receives nothing meaningful in return for the fees they pay and the trust they give.
Until Student Government lets go of symbolic gestures and commits to genuine leadership, students will be represented by a senate that is present in appearance and absent in impact.
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