Sunday marked the last meeting of the 2004-2005 TCU Senate year, one which certainly accomplished several goals that served the needs of all Jumbos. The most important of these accomplishments included the continuation of the weekend shuttle to Boston, the negotiation of lower cab fares for students traveling to Logan Airport, and the creation of a fund to help pay for alcohol-free events. Such accomplishments prompted outgoing TCU President Dave Baumwoll to remark that this past year's Senate was the best one in the history of the institution.
Typical of a politician, however, Baumwoll seems to have overstated the case. While it is true that the Senate and the senators can list several impressive accomplishments to their peers, on the whole the body continues to seem rather insular and ineffective.
Many of the accomplishments cited by Baumwoll at the last meeting were not concrete in any sense of the word, but rather tentative and nonbinding first steps toward progress, such as the resolution urging faculty to notify students if law enforcement officials have siezed a student's educational records.
At points where the Senate could have demonstrated meaningful leadership and student advocacy, most notably in mediating relations with community neighbors, Senate leaders chose to forego providing a forceful voice for their constituency (Tufts students) in order to play nice with those in power.
Much of this lack of advocacy can be chalked up to a general apathy on the part of Jumbos, many of whom are entirely unconcerned with the activities of the Senate. This is unfortunate, but it is not surprising, given the cliquish nature of the institution (including closed-door post-meeting sessions). The Senate becomes an institution that tends to look inward to solve its problems, instead of to its constituencies. This is reinforced by the nature of the TCU Senate and presidential elections.
The candidates for TCU president are chosen by the Senate itself, a process that works to ensure that the candidates will be similar to each other. Witness last year's race of Baumwoll against then-Senator Joe Mead, wherein the candidates disagreed, by even the most generous accounts, on only one or two issues. If you cared about whether there should be facilities for students to work out downhill, then you had a real choice in the election.
Most Jumbos, needless to say, did not care. The resulting apathy multiplies itself in the form of less voter turnout and thus less voter investment in monitoring the progress of the Senate. Our campus is one that prides itself on political awareness, yet very rarely are non-freshman Senate elections contested. The in-crowd of the Senate thus grows less responsive to students since it doesn't have to compete for re-election and is more content to congratulate itself on half-measures and false starts instead of real progress.
To re-energize the Senate and increase voter turnout we need competitive elections with real differences between the candidates. In order to achieve that, the Senate must open up the Presidential nominating process to the entire Tufts community. The end result will be more productive for everyone on campus: we don't need a resolution to figure that out.
