Williams: Congressional distractions at the colligate level

Thursday, February 7, 2008

With all this hubbub brewing about U.S. senators running for the presidency, I couldn’t help but notice some parallels with student senators vying for the student presidency. While sometimes humorous on the student level, the U.S. Senate’s wasting of precious time and money can be frustrating and perplexing.

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It seems at times the U.S. Congress has its priorities screwed up, or at the very least forgets to put on its thinking cap.

Case in point: last semester a bill was introduced urging student senators to take a stance on hate crimes. The only apparent reason for this bill’s existence was to pressure the senators to assume a political posture because of a heinous act to an off-campus fraternity. The only problem in particular was the senate members spending upwards of an hour debating whether they should send a notice to university officials and state representatives, reiterating a policy to which all university personnel adhere and acknowledge anyway.

The senate narrowly decided to table the lackluster bill indefinitely, which in turn lead to an incendiary ordeal. It’s interesting to consider that nearly one-third of the student senators are minorities.

Why was it necessary for the U.S. Congress and senate to be extraordinarily inefficient and/or daft in 2005? Was an emergency session for Terri Schiavo, weeks spent debating the legality of flag burning or months spent glorifying heterosexual marriages obligatory or even imperative? Consider that all the other foreign and domestic issues — such as changing strategies for the war and increasing minimum wage — took more than a year to come to fruition.

It seems at times the U.S. Congress has its priorities screwed up, or at the very least forgets to put on its thinking cap. Not to denigrate Student Senate and imply that some senators go Rick Santorum crazy and introduce senseless bills. There are good weeks and bad weeks in the Student Senate chambers, just like our good-old grown up senate and congress.

I like to think that the president Hannah Love is something of a Hillary Clinton-esque figure. She is strong, authoritative and has a fashionable blonde hair. Both women have assumed great positions of political authority and have yet to cause any gender-based problems.

In my Communications 332 class last semester, some male dolt had the gall to not only imply that a woman would do an inferior job in the oval office, but also to explicitly state that a woman couldn’t do it sufficiently.

I may be wrong, but the state of Kansas, the University of Kansas and the state of New York haven’t gone up in flames because a woman was at the helm of the governorship, student body presidency or senatorship.

Oh, and ask Drew Faust how Harvard is faring under her leadership.

I suspect this season’s student body presidency race will become mired in the briar and nettle of disingenuous implications from one side or the other, just like that of the national race. I do concede that both the U.S. Congress and student senators tax themselves with endless hours of hard work and tedious number crunching. Yet sometimes a lengthy debate on encouraging free and reasonable debate in student senate is not only a political time eater but a diversion from pertinent and stressful work.

Williams is a Coffeyville junior in English and Pre-Law.

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