NEEDED: A FOCUSED, REALISTIC A.S. RESOLUTION
By Matthew L’Heureux

University of California, San Diego
The UCSD Guardian Online, CA
April 23 2007

April 23, 2007 – My eight quarters at UCSD have given me many things:
triumphs and successes, sleepless nights and headaches and perhaps
most importantly of all, the ability to witness numerous occasions of
unadulterated impracticality. As you may or may not find surprising,
many of those moments were spent behind my laptop in Price Center
Ballroom A, also known as the site of my year-and-a-quarter stint as
the A.S. Council beat writer.

A large part of my oft-thrilling job entailed sitting at council
meetings every Wednesday night to observe the highlights (and
lowlights) of our student government’s performance. While I don’t
deny that the council as an entity has done its fair share of
productive things over the years, there was always one particular
agenda item that habitually left me scratching my head and looking at
my watch: the generally well-meaning, but often misguided,
resolution.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a resolution, it is a
nonbinding statement designed to communicate the council’s opinion on
an issue. In the last two years, the council has passed a whopping 30
of them, ranging in topics from the campus’s automated course
waitlist program, the proposed off-campus Hillel Center, national
immigration policy and – my favorite – a resolution to ban A.S.
President Harry Khanna from the Web site Facebook.com. (Seriously.)

However well-intentioned, most of these resolutions effectively fall
flat almost immediately after their passage – either the subjects
are too lofty to have an easy solution, or the sheer nightmare of
bureaucracy leads to nothing but bickering and wasted time.

Most recently, the council voted on April 18 to pass a resolution
offering condolences to families of the victims from the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University shootings. After debate
about semantics led to a failed proposal to postpone the resolution
for a week, the meeting broke for a 30-minute recess.

This wouldn’t be the first time.

A little more than a year ago, the outgoing council debated
a resolution in support of establishing April 24 as a day of
remembrance for victims of genocide in Armenia. The stage was set
for what seemed to be an easy vote, with a passionate, knowledgeable
speaker explaining how his organization desired the council’s help
to honor all his countrymen who had died.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that, at the time, I knew next to
nothing about this incident and what I did know was vague and sketchy
(thanks, Making of the Modern World). So, I was not particularly
surprised when several councilmembers commented that they did not
feel prepared enough to vote on such a heated topic. However, this
argument quickly merged with the idea that it was not the council’s
place to make sweeping social generalizations, and that any such
undertaking would ultimately be pointless and ineffective.

Many councilmembers then began to ponder the body’s true purpose.

Some senators said that the council’s purpose is to be a body of action
on behalf of students, which should focus on student issues that it
can feasibly solve. Had I not been forced to hide behind my shield
of impartiality, I’d have been right there with the senators snapping
their fingers in agreement – the issue was not about what a government
would like to do, but understanding the limitations of what it can do.

No one in the room debated the horror of genocide or the
reprehensibility of its perpetuators. Similarly, I’m confident that
no one believed expressing condolences to grieving families was an
unworthy undertaking. But with UCSD’s student government structured
the way it is, resolutions have proven to have a mixed success rate –
often making the council appear weaker than it really is because some
of its rallying cries can realistically accomplish little.

In looking back at the resolutions of the past two years, only a
moderate percentage of them appear to have had any direct effect on
campus (or governmental) policy. Though the council advocated for
them, students lack complete control of their Student-Run Television
station, a problem-free course waitlist system, freedom from excessive
fee hikes, the Hillel Center and certainly a "just and comprehensive"
national immigration policy. As for Khanna and his Facebook addiction,
don’t be fooled – he’s online right now as I sit here writing this
column. None of this can be blamed on the A.S. Council, however,
because these were never problems that the council could actually do
anything about.

In fact, when resolutions pertain to UCSD directly, they seem to have
a much higher success rate – council support for the Office of Academic
Support and Instructional Services last year undoubtedly played a role
in garnering financial backing for the program when it faced severe
budget cuts. Similarly, a resolution encouraging the university to
provide fair trade products on campus might very well have impacted
Housing and Dining Services’ decision to offer fair-trade coffee
options. The problem with resolutions, therefore, is a simple one –
in order for them to be effective, the council must have a realistic
idea of what it can accomplish, and put its time and resources into
those particular projects.

The council recently received a wake-up call through unexpected
student support for Revelle College senior and former independent
presidential candidate Junaid Fatehi, perhaps the only candidate to
openly admit he didn’t want the position for which he was running.

Fatehi, who scorned councilmembers as mere figureheads who make empty
promises, only reinforced the idea that superfluous resolutions fail
to do the council any good. When 388 students vote for a presidential
candidate who urinates on Round Table Pizza’s wall at the announcement
of election returns, it makes a statement (however limited) about
student confidence in their own government. By attempting to solve
more problems than it has the power to change, the council shifts the
focus away from all that it is accomplishing, and dwells on what it
simply has no control over.

My advice to our esteemed leaders, from the perspective of a moderately
informed observer: If you must make a resolution, stick to the realm
of possibility and keep in mind the fine line between being politically
responsible and shooting for the moon.