Last month, the Student Senate created a new student-government position at the University of Southern Maine: student body president. The Senate approved the new position as a trial run that will need approval by next year’s Senate. The president will change the structure of the student government and could shift relations between the student body and administration.
Ezekiel Kimball, Student Senate chair, and Chris O’Connor, four-year staff advisor to the senate and Assistant to the Dean of Student Life, see the move shifting USM away from the idea of a Student Senate to a student government. Of course, as a student government gets bigger, there exist more areas for potential abuse. The president will have the ability to veto the Senate, within one week of a vote, and the Senate can overturn the president with a two-thirds majority vote.
“Hopefully the position will develop itself over time. It’s potentially a great thing,” O’Connor said. The position is limited to just this year, and next year, the students will have to ratify the idea if they want to continue it.
A completely unscientific canvassing of the Portland campus revealed a range of opinions from cautious optimism, to indifference, to outright cynicism.
Said one senior student-athlete: “I’m not really familiar with the government. It sounds like a good idea. It might make me more interested.”
A sophomore business major was less enthused: “It would be of interest to other people. I’m just trying to get a degree and start a business.”
Finally, a junior nursing major said: “The administration doesn’t listen to us. I’ve tried. A president’s not likely to change that.” The numbers from last year’s Student Senate election echo the lack of enthusiasm. According to O’Connor, of 8,000 eligible student voters, only 600 turned out at the polls. That is a turn out of only 7.5 percent.
The Student Government hopes to change those numbers in the upcoming election. This year, all voting will be done online, which O’Connor and the Senate hope will make it easier to vote, and there should be more campaigning with the presidential position on the line. The goal this year is 1,800 votes-three times last year’s number.
The idea of a student body president circulated in the Student Senate for years. According to Craig Hutchinson, USM’s vice president for Student Development, the ideas was suggested as long ago as 1991, when he was the advisor for the Student Senate. He’s still in favor of it today.
“It’s a great idea,” he said. “It makes sense. It makes it much more like reality.” Separate powers should be in separate branches, and “two arms of government are better than one.”
Unlike the United States government system, which has three branches-executive, legislative and judicial-that act as checks and balances, the USM student government is currently composed of only 21 senators elected by the student body. Any undergraduate student taking more than three credits at USM is eligible to vote. The Senate then chooses a chair to lead them and the student body that the senators represent. With the creation of a student body president, the student body will be able to choose its own leader for the first time.
Though his duties will be effectively halved, Kimball doesn’t seem to mind. Before the creation of the new position, Kimball saw the chair as having two contradictory roles: To be the strongest student voice on campus, but at the same time be unbiased on any issue coming into the assembly.
“The chair was supposed to at the same time, have the strongest opinion and no opinion,” said Kimball.
It is a rare individual that can fill both roles. This can be seen by the past two student senate chairs, says Chris O’Connor, four-year staff advisor to the senate and Assistant to the Dean of Student Life. Last year’s chair, Jeremy Collette, “was very focused on external relations-meetings with the administration, addressing student needs.” And this year’s chair’s first priority was to address government policies, like the creation of a student body president. By separating the two governmental obligations, it frees the president to unabashedly advocate for the student body and allows the chair to concentrate on leading the senate.
This separation of duties makes the president “a wonderful idea,” said O’Connor. The senate is in charge of $600,000 from the Student Activity Fee, and distributing it can drain much of the Senate’s time. O’Connor said, “the current structure focuses on the business side of government.” The position of president can be used to “better represent students and give them a more active voice with the administration.” It also gives the administration a specific go-to person on issues.