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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: Re: Student Govt. What purpose?
Message-ID: <3398@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 22:54:22 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3398
Posted: Thu Feb 27 22:54:22 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 04:44:18 EST
References: <333@ihu1n.UUCP> <95@mit-amt.MIT.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 31

Here at UMCP, the SGA only has three real powers:

(1) It can spend some of the Student Activities Fees.

(2) It allocates the rest of said fees.

(3) It can expell one of its members from the SGA (making a BIG black mark
    on his or her resume).

It can also lobby and pass meaningless resolutions; power over (for
instance) smoking rules, the student union, and the like belongs to other
organizations.  It also helps keep the _Diamondback_ from being totally
consumed by advertising.

Right now we are having a little flap which illustrates just how little
power the SGA really wields.  Some black student organization invited a
well-known black activist to speak on campus.  In the course of his speech,
he allegedly made the statement that the only good zionist is a dead
zionist, and other anti-semetic remarks.  Needless to say, the jewish
student groups screamed and demanded that the speaking fee (which presumably
came from Student Activity Fees) be withheld.  The SGA has not involved
itself in the matter at all-- the crisis has been mediated directly by the
chancellor.

At the moment we are in sort of a wierd period.  In the last SGA elections,
the Monarchist Party, after some 13 years, won all four executive seats, and
also a few legislative seats-- on a platform propsing to build a beer-filled
moat around campus.  This is having the effect that many things are not
being taken so deadly seriously as they have been in the past.

C. Wingate