Welcome!

This is the inaugural post of my campaign blog. Throughout the Senate election, I'll be posting regularly on issues central to my campaign as well as any issues you feel are important to Oberlin. I'm also happy to answer any of your questions.

I thought I would begin by addressing Senate as an institution. How it operates formally and in practice, and what it can do for all of us as students.

Formally, the Student Senate, along with Faculty Senate, comprises the General Faculty, the central policy making body of Oberlin. Student Senators not only vote on policies before the General Faculty, but sit on and approve student committee assignments. Senators serve for one year, and are subject to recall, although the threshold for a recall petition is quite high, and I don't know of any petitions that have ever been circulated.

In practice, the influence of Student Senate on college policy is regularly and cynically questioned by many students. Every spring, students are presented with a “referendum”, which, despite the name, looks more like a long-winded survey. The real or perceived low importance of these elections leads to low voter turnout, perhaps a result of ballot fatigue.

The tragedy here is that Student Senate could be a very powerful institution, in theory and in practice. And the fact of the matter is that it ought to be. Not for any nefarious purpose or as a result of hubris, but because students are perhaps the biggest “stakeholders” (I hate that word) on campus. We're at Oberlin because we want to be. We (or our parents) are paying for it. Most of all, for a majority of the year, we live here. We not only have the right, but the obligation to shape our college and how it operates.

Taking such an approach, however, means (1) that students have to think about Student Senate differently and (2) that Student Senate might need to be restructured so it can fully represent us. Here are some possibilities to consider (I will expand on these ideas in future posts):

Changing the Size and Composition of Senate

Right now, Senate has 15 members elected for a year each. They're elected at large by the single-transferable vote (STV), a preferential voting method (see Wikipedia for more info on this) which is fairer than plurality and faster than a runoff. [NB: As a political activist in Phoenix, Arizona, my focus is electoral reform; many of the points I present about elections are drawn from that experience.] This is largely fine. But Oberlin has many communities of interest (OSCA members and members of program houses are two examples) an at-large election system might not directly account for. In fact, the Constitution already provides for representation by Conservatory students. One possible solution here is the use of proportional allocation, where seats could be “districted” to engage more kinds of people.

The second issue here is size. In last year's spring referendum, the Senate asked voters how they felt about increasing Senate's size. Although reception to the idea was not very positive (perhaps due to the fact that Senators pull an hourly wage), an increased size would mean a bigger voice for students in the General Faculty.

Changing the Rules for Referenda/Expanding Senate Authority

In Arizona, where I've lived for six years now, initiative, referendum and recall are mainstays of state politics (IR&R was largely adopted by states west of the Mississippi during the Populist and Progressive eras.) Citizens are allowed to petition for new laws to be placed on the ballot, the legislature can (and regularly does!) place laws on the ballot, citizens can request a vote on anything the legislature passes and members of the legislature can be removed in a special recall election.

But the important thing is that these ballot questions aren't polls—they're actual votes on important issues. Furthermore, in Arizona, once a law has been approved by voters, it can't be repealed without their consent, and the governor has no veto. And because the signature threshold takes some effort to reach, you don't typically see long lists of questions at each election. Contrast this with Oberlin's elections, and you start to see why people don't return their ballots, electronic or otherwise—there's just too much stuff. At to that the fact that these votes have no “legal” force (College rules certainly don't stipulate that Student Senate votes have any kind of binding authority!) and you have a recipe for voter apathy.

One obvious solution is to change the way Senate referenda work, and possibly all elections. Vague wording of questions, the need for twenty percent voter turnout that is rarely met in a timely fashion and ballot fatigue are all things that could be addressed with a Constitutional amendment put to students. The other half of the equation, the degree to which Senate's votes matter, would have to be addressed on higher levels: General Faculty, administration, etc. I myself would advocate for college governance to be devolved into a fully bicameral system: Student Senate as the lower house, the rest of the General Faculty as the upper house. Radical? Maybe. But it would certainly allow students a large voice in college policy, if we can show we're willing and able to take on that job, and that we can work with administration as well as anybody else.

Senate Continuity

It might be worth considering expanding the Senate's term to two years rather than one. Under such a system, the Senate could be dissolved early, as in many parliamentary systems. The goal here would be to ensure Senate's membership is stable, especially if the body's size were increased.

Other Thoughts

The ideas I've presented here lie on the fundamental side of things. The issues aren't particularly sexy, but they get to the heart of what Student Senate is and what it does. In future posts, I'll talk about my ideas for the environment, energy usage on campus and the like. I'd also love to hear what you care about and if there's anything in particular you'd like to hear me post about.

Drop me an email: helpertcell@gmail.com and give me a recognizable subject line.

Also, Tuesday, September 21 is the deadline for endorsements. If your organization, co-op, underwater basket-weaving club, etc. wants to endorse me or have me come give a short stump speech, write me before then. Or if you just want to hear me talk without an endorsement, email me after that ;-).