It is to my satisfaction, not to ever even remotely relate the history date of 476 A.D, to the state of function of the Student Congress of the University of Bridgeport 2002/2003. It is extraordinarily hard to watch the body you thought had a power of initiative, change, execution, and warmness of a friend, dissipate into the reporting body with minimal invested effort into the betterness of the UB student life.Not so long ago one could see Jee Lee, the President of Student Congress 2000/01, painting Twisted along with a dozen of other elected members, or bump into her while she was going to forever-lasting meetings, or just distributing the printed report in Marina, of what Student Congress accomplished in the two weeks that have passed. A number of Student Congress sponsored events were delivered, and organized by it. Just last year Esther Bessell, the Student Congress President 2001/02, was seen planting trees, taking charge of a successful UB Olympics, sponsoring Winter Prelude, and actively trying to recruit congress members to help her and others leave a conspicuous change for the better.
When all is said and done, one can prefer one President over the other, based on beliefs, and the yields of their government. But afyer becoming closely associated with the current Congress and present at the sad biweekly Joint Congress, and biweekly Senate and House of Representatives meeting one can not help but wonder: What went wrong? Really, help me understand!
One thing is the same; although there are about 1,500 undergraduate students, there was always a problem of filling all the positions, and frequently the nominee for the President of the Student Congress would go unopposed, unlike last year. Putting this aside, the last three administrations have been able to produce qualitative change, initiative, school spirit a number of committees dealing with different subjects to facilitate the outcome, introduction of amendments to the Key to UB, heavy debates on those issues, team effort and importantly, motivation for the members to act as leaders and representatives.
The spirit of Congress members 2002/03 is barely alive. Biweekly Joint Congress, and strong discussion and debates, have been transformed into short reporting sessions, and it has even happened twice so far, that I remember, that the Student Congress President said that there were no topics to be discussed, and thus the meeting wasn’t even held. The highly uncommunicative Student Congress Vice President is on the verge of actually doing something that students can benefit from. But we’ll see if the announced debate happens. Meetings of the House of Representatives lasts usually about 15 minutes, and believe me, I appreciate conciseness, but bored looks on faces and no life drives aren’t a good model. So far, the only visible thing that has been done is the Game Room, which was purchased from the 10% of the Congress Budget that the Executive Board has at its discretion with the consent of the Dean of Students. Yeah, it was only a couple of phone calls, and a meeting or two, but I give full credit for it. Whether it was a success, or emptiness, as I see every time I pass is a matter of another article.
What ever happened, has led to the poor attendance of meetings by its members. No motivation. Almost nothing accomplished. Actually if one asked each Senator, Co-Senator, Class President or Class Vice president, or any other associated members, to name a specific contribution to student life, I believe very few would be able to.
We are in dire need of change and motivation. I urge all the students to participate in upcoming Student Congress elections, and put an effort in the future of the on-and-off campus life of UB. We have funds to make a change, but what we lack is some fresh blood.
-Student Congress Member