At a four-year college, the turnover in any student organization can at times be staggering.
It’s probably a fact of college life most visible with sports teams: a basketball team loses its star senior point guard — think the Bearcats and Mike Gordon — and things inherently look less promising the following year.
Sometimes the returning players and the newcomers effectively fill the vacancies. But sometimes the vacancies are, be it a lack of initiative, a lack of communication, a lack of talent — a lack of something — too great. For the time being, the team sputters. Then, as quickly as things went south, you see improvements. People start moving into their roles, and rebuilding begets success.
For the most part, the scenarios remain the same for student groups outside of athletics.
But, as Boris Tadchiev, Student Association executive vice president, points out, there can be a lack of communication between organization leadership from one year to the next (see Page 1). It’s that lack of communication that Tadchiev said has allowed for about 20 student groups to lose their SA charters, and their funding with it.
Sports teams, in most cases, carry over a coach, and therefore, consistent leadership. Non-athletic student groups don’t. The group leaders are, in many ways, on their own year to year.
The SA, a group that has turnover itself, has the luxury of full-timers Jackie Zigorsky and Kristen Carr. Most other student organizations are completely on their own.
We don’t want to absolve the new student group leaders for allowing their groups to lose their charters — they are, ultimately, responsible for their groups. If they weren’t sure of anything, they should have checked.
But this situation, both in the present and in the events that led up to it, are aggravating and unnecessary. The registration process with the SA via the PAWS system is accessible, but not exactly intuitive or quick. And now, for the groups that managed to slip through the cracks, things come to a halt while the SA sorts the matter out.
It’s irresponsibility on the part of some student leaders, but exacerbated by an SA system that is still too bureaucratic, still too intimidating and too distant for people who don’t understand the SA’s technicalities or much else with their student group’s workings beyond its mission statement. It’s a loss to the campus that some groups’ contributions will be put on hold while paperwork is sorted out.
On both sides, people need to start taking initiative and get done what needs to get done. There’s no more to it.