By Zac Bestwick
As any student org leader at GW is well aware, being on an e-board involves a lot more than just working with your fellow officers to run operations. It also involves meeting the many requirements set by the Office of Student Life. This semester in particular, these requirements can range from tedious to downright wastes of time.
Take October 1st’s Student Org Summit, for example. This year, the Student Association tried to take several of the sessions it required of student org leaders in the past and merge them into a one-day-only, four-and-a-half hour session that was mandatory for no less than two officers from each student org. The change left one to wonder how a single session, offered on a single day, occupying over four hours is in any way more convenient or efficient than offering a series of short, flexible sessions that students could easily work into their busy schedules. Perhaps they thought that turning required sessions into an ‘event’ would make students less likely to forget their requirements, or maybe they just felt that their yield in past years lacked fanfare. In any case, this new structure was a very large ask for org leaders, especially on a Sunday morning.
If the idea itself wasn’t head-scratching enough, the execution of the Student Org Summit was even more vexing. While the event’s start time was communicated to org officers as 9am, the event did not actually begin until 10am, forcing attendees to wake up an extra hour early (on a Sunday morning!) for no reason at all. The event that followed provided some interesting leadership strategies as well as important Title IX information, but nothing in this summit demanded such a vast time slot. The students who were able to remain awake throughout the entire presentation would likely agree that the necessary portions could have been delivered in an hour, tops.
The summit’s hosts repeatedly expressed their agitation with the student leaders’ disgruntled attitudes, but who can blame them? This event exemplifies the detached relationship that the Student Association and the Office of Student life have with the student organizations they’re supposed to be supporting. The SA requires attendance in more than just the Org Summit, also mandating that orgs send officers to attend finance info meetings, even if they have already done so in the past. Not offered, however, are meetings that might support student orgs in ways that would directly improve their week-to-week operations, such as how to best reach students with different kinds of marketing materials or maintain consistent attendance at org events.
Rather than meeting org leaders where they’re at by supporting them how they wish to be supported, the SA has built itself to be an almost parental figure in the space of student orgs. Student life officials lecture org leaders when they miss a meeting or skip a step in their org registration, but they are nowhere to be found when all is well with an org. A healthier relationship between student government and org leaders would involve Student Life officials checking in and asking org presidents how their operations could be better supported. Instead, the Org Help office has come to feel a bit like the principal’s office, a place you only find yourself when you’ve messed up.
It isn’t too late for Student Life to mend its tenuous relationship with GW’s student organizations. In the second half of the semester, those who govern student orgs should take some time to reach out to e-boards and humbly solicit their feedback. The result might just be a less stressful experience for both parties.
