Dear Editors,
So I find myself reading two related articles in The Horizon just a few weeks ago. One pertains to the Student Government Association, for lack of a better word, losing their minds. How did they lose their minds, you might ask?
That’s a little hard to explain, but part of it comes from the fact that even though secrecy on campus isn’t always something you can attain, you can request it in the SGA meetings, it’s called executive session.
In spite of what you think or have been lead to believe by some of the press about “executive session,” it was not designed to deceive or mislead. Its function, an important one, was to keep people’s private lives out of the public view. How do I know this? I spent 2 ½ years in the senate and I saw time after time. Issues come up that needed to be kept discreet and out of public view. Every time, and I mean every single time, this happened it had nothing to do with the campus, the activities fee, or the administration, it had to do with someone’s private life and needed to be kept private. So back to the senate, the senate has simply lost their way, they have become confused, maybe their hearts are bleeding too much, and they have forgotten that the privacy of the individual senators is not public information of the whole school.
As for the editorial, I understand the confusion, and well appreciate the well written ignorance of the article. The ignorance stems from the lack of knowledge over how far transparency goes. Governments should be transparent, even student governments, but the idea that all secrets are bad, and that somehow transparency over the private lives of the members of the senate is acceptable, well is plain wrong.
So what have we learned? All secrets are not bad, the senate has lost its way, but it’s not a completely lost, and editorials are great for lining birdcages. So if you feel that privacy is important, and you think that the students have a right to it, join the senate and make your voice heard. Don’t be misguided or mislead anymore, fix it.
former SGA senator and alumni,
Joseph M. Taflinger