Technology would bring transparency to VSA

The primary reason I ran for President of the Class of 2011 this spring is that I felt that there is a disconnect between our Class Council and the constituents which it represents.
Being Class Treasurer this past year, I felt as if we were not doing all that we could to serve our peers who trusted us to represent them. For example, not once in a Class Council meeting did the floor open up to address what was going on in each individual House.

We did discuss—and by discuss, I mean that the outgoing Class of 2011 President Joseph Redwood-Martinez summarized—what went on at each Vassar Student Association (VSA) meeting almost every week, but it felt as if we as Council members were once-removed from it. I do not recall a time that I was asked about an important issue confronting the VSA.

Now I do not mean to say that the VSA in general is not an opaque body. All VSA Council meetings are open to the public. We know who is on the VSA Council—and if we really wanted to, we could hunt them down on Facebook to ask them questions and tell them exactly what we want from them. The agenda and minutes from every weekly meeting are available online at the VSA Web site. Even so, VSA President-elect Caitlin Ly '10 made a pledge in her statement to "democratize the VSA through transparency initiatives."

The big plan that she proposes is to record videos to put on the plasma screens in the Retreat and in the College Center Atrium—her own version of President Barack Obama's weekly addresses on YouTube.

While I agree that this would help, I at the same time find it troubling that in spite of all the ways in which the VSA is transparent already, students are simply not utilizing the options already available to them in becoming involved student government.

Vassar is a very politically involved campus—as was evident during this last presidential election cycle. Yet off the top of my head, I cannot think of anyone who actually reads the VSA minutes every week—including myself. At the VSA meeting I attended on April 19, to which an invitation was extended to all candidates running for Council positions, only about 15 to 20 people not already sitting on the Council showed up.

Most of these people were there because they had an organization up for certification, an event to promote, a committee report to give or were on the Miscellany. Outgoing VSA President Jimmy Kelly '09 remarked that they had a "big crowd" that night. Something is definitely wrong with this picture. The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard the VSA tries—no matter how much progress it has made—it still does not adequately represent the needs of every student on campus. New transparency initiatives are, in my opinion, the best way to attempt to remedy this situation.

I firmly believe that students who don't hold elected positions on campus should still be actively involved in student government, and should have their voices heard. Unfortunately, up to this point I feel that bureaucracy has gotten in the way of this goal.

That is why a large part of my campaign platform was transparency. Why is there not a VSA Facebook page that we can "fan" in order to get status updates as to what's going on with the VSA at the given moment? Why is there not a VSA Twitter? Why is the task left to The Miscellany News to live blog VSA meetings, and why do I have to go to their Web site to see it? Why am I not being regularly polled via a blog or Facebook—or, heck, even Survey Monkey, concerning important initiatives that will directly affect me in the time that I have left at Vassar—for instance, Vassar's change from Blackboard to Moodle?

We live in a time of unprecedented technological growth, paired with a world that is integrated via social networking applications like never before. Yet the VSA does not use any of this technology to communicate with the people they represent.

The VSA Council instead solely relies on class and dorm presidents to represent their constituents on a variety issues that will affect their Vassar experience, and up to this point I have not been asked personally about any of those issues.

Newsflash: I don't know anyone who wants to read lengthy e-mails about meetings they weren't at. I don't know anyone who wants to read mass e-mails in general. I do, however, know people who want to know what the VSA and Class Councils are doing. Technology must be used to the utmost extent to help constituents stay informed. If I can go online and read all about every twist and turn in the Lindsay Lohan-Samantha Ronson debacle in just five minutes, I sure as hell better be able to do the same with the VSA and Class Councils, and it better be just as easy.

It's 2009. Before we enter the second decade of this century, would it be too much to ask for the VSA to get with the first?

—Nick Dressler was a candidate for Class of 2011 President in the 2009-10 VSA Elections. He lives in Main Building.