Emergence of party politics

By Вen Li

Though germinal legislation establishing the Students’ Union and the same articles 60 years hence are mute to the politics of faction within our student government, such is now necessitated by the explicit reality of special interests.

Whereas groups exterior to formal student governance–concerned with religion, gender and public policy–have repeatedly petitioned the SU without affirmative consequence, the consolidated efforts of broader interests seek reform from within at this election. The pleasant trepidation of such active interest in student governance should be moderated by our collective inexperience with factional politics in this setting.

Presently, two constellations of unique interests each desire a legislative majority from the votes of a minority of students. They seek to exchange the responsibilities and original unrestrained distinctiveness of hitherto independent legislators for those bearing such qualities and objectives as imbued from a cabal of others. Such representatives, empowered with office but beholden to their own consciences and that of their parties along with constituents, should hope to establish legislative stability beyond the accustomed annual continuity of policy necessitated by one-year terms.

With our opportunity to re-forge a student government in which parties can provide continuity of policy and responsibility arises our ability to evaluate candidates on their chosen parties’ past performance as well as their own. Denial of incumbency will become the reprimand of choice for both parties and voters and comportment with inadequacy ceases to be default.

At this time of great potential change, the particular and considered choices of voters are thus of paramount importance.

Posterity demands the temptation of artificial majority must not overwhelm the temperance of rational deliberation. Students’ interests demand a legislature that contemplates equally by appointed leaders and the interests of all students. Only from fair consideration of the majority and all factions will arise the harmonious chorus of a considered and justified decision to the potential benefit of all. Actions of less substance or rigor will be to the benefit of none, except to elevate those other individuals and parties who seek our investment of trust and representation in the next election.

The heritage of efforts last year and presently toward partition will surely become the Students’ Legislative Council if not this year then the next. But, by unknown circumstance, the Students’ Academic Assembly was entirely uncontested by the two major parties. Enlightened legislators of the past advanced this secondary chamber for deliberation of academic matters, unburdened by the rigors of gross mechanical legislation. Immune from emergent external factionalism, this unadulterated second seat of power–which would offer faculty representatives a bastion for deliberation free from external political agenda–is derelict of candidates. Disinterest will possibly allow it to be subsumed by free factionalism in the fall.

Finally, of unenviable consequence to the presence of multitude of factions, is the consolidation and persistence of temperaments in active opposition, contrasting the current weak and uncertain federations of independent legislators. Students must adjudicate potential leaders by their spirit of compromise and ability to forge disparate interests, such leaders being unlike some recent self-invested student officials who have been blinded by irrelevance. Organized internal adversity of a magnitude previously unknown to the Students’ Union will serve as a selective function of legislative moderation, and will agglomerate efforts to accomplish with priority goals which yield value to all.