As turmoil enmeshed the high offices of Ohio University student government last week, no one else experienced any change in their daily routines. Traffic buzzed up Court Street, people walked to and from class across College Green and students filed through the lines at the dining halls. Life in Athens moved along its normal routine, and nobody noticed the upheaval in the Student Senate. That's right - OU Student Senators staged a power play last week, removing Vice President Katie Simpson after a closed two-hour executive session. Beyond their normal pretending to be politicians in obscurity, far removed from the students they represent, the senators reverted to outright secrecy, cloistering themselves away from any attention at all to kick out an official they didn't like.
Nobody is quite sure of the details behind Simpson's ouster. Senators have their own independent versions of the story (that they didn't get along with her); the official Senate story (that she didn't do her job); and Simpson's own view on why she was impeached (that the other senators just didn't like her). Nobody is quite sure what will happen to the vacant vice president's spot.
There were further developments on Thursday, though once again, everyone involved has a different way of telling the story. A senate official said Simpson improperly re-entered the offices in Baker Center and began taking documents, but further details are sketchy. She might have been accompanied by another ex-Senator who had fallen out of favor with the Baker 3rd floor power brokers. No one knows that she took or what significance it has in the larger imbroglio. Then again, does it matter? No.
If there was a time when the intrigue and politicking of Student Senate had any relevance for the typical student, that time is long past. The senators promised last year they would get students more involved with senate programs, but when the elected officials spend all their time squabbling over people they don't like, why should anyone get involved? And if the senators cannot get along with each other, how can they hope to create any goodwill between themselves and the students?
The biggest losers in all this senate upheaval are the students, but not because their business was mishandled or their interests neglected - though both are true. Students lose because their representatives conducted an ostensibly serious proceeding in secret. Even on the remote chance a regular student might have showed interest in the night's proceedings, she or he would have been locked out. For a group that takes itself as seriously as student lawmakers, the senators showed a surprising willingness to subvert their own high-minded ideals and keep the impeachment and removal proceedings a secret. As a public, state-funded decision-making group, Student Senate should be subject to all the same sunshine laws that cover every committee from the General Assembly to the Athens County Commissioners. Representatives can meet in closed sessions, but they cannot vote on anything unless the public is admitted.
The senate saga underscores a systemic failure in OU's student government. To wit: Too few students are interested or involved with Senate, so it attracts narrow groups of cronies who run the show for themselves. When an outsider enters the mix, the dominant group resists, leading to last year's high-profile resignation of then-vice president Josh Wolf, the keelhauling of former information systems manager Jeremy Valeda or last week's impeachment of Simpson. Students are turned off by the pettiness of the whole thing; they become uninterested, and the process repeats. But there's always dissention in government
senators might say. Look at Congress. Sure. But in grown-up politics, U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) don't always get along, but to date they have not tried to kick each other out. Voters are ultimately responsible for who represents them, and in the last elections, OU students picked Simpson. What validity does Senate have if officials override students' picks because they don't get along?
No one can be sure if last week's senate silliness was an isolated incident, or part of a larger campaign to weed out all insurgent or unwanted representatives. The reason nobody knows is because the senators have kept a tight lid on any actual facts about Simpson's impeachment or because there are many different versions of each fact about the proceedings. But regardless how secret senate becomes, and how stridently it claims justification for its actions, it has fallen irreparably into irrelevance. 17
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