Whether on the Hill or on the Hilltop, representative governments have one simple responsibility: to act in the best interests of their constituencies. However, the Georgetown University Student Association has been operating with barely enough senators to meet a simple majority quorum on a week-to-week basis—an embarrassment to both GUSA and Georgetown, which prides itself on the political involvement of its student body. Senators must realize that they have each been elected to act on behalf of hundreds of students who would otherwise not have a voice in student government—and that those senators who routinely miss GUSA’s weekly meetings are exploiting the trust of those who elected them.
Last week, the Senate called for the expulsion of six senators whose excessive absences have, for the last five months, gone largely without reprimand. This is an unacceptable delay in starting the process of removing delinquent senators, whose Senate seats may not be filled by their replacements for an additional month. GUSA senators can technically be expelled if they miss as few as three meetings; however, by excessively delaying the expulsion of these mostly off-campus senators, GUSA’s Senate has further alienated a large group of already disconnected students. The Senate should swiftly take action to remove those senators who are not fulfilling their duties by reforming the process by which this action can take place.
Some measures have already been taken to improve GUSA’s transparency. Most notably, Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11) recently started a live blog named openGUSA, which streams the Senate’s meetings online. However, simply broadcasting the fact that the Senate is currently operating with only two-thirds of its membership is not a solution to the body’s attendance problem. To hold senators more accountable to the students they represent, the Senate should make each meeting’s roll-call easily available online. Furthermore, GUSA senators should be held accountable by their fellow senators for every meeting they miss. While a few absences are inevitable, by simply calling absent senators at the beginning of each meeting, the Senate could quickly discover which senators’ absences are because of legitimate conflicts and which are indicative of a pattern of shirking their responsibilities.
Of course, Georgetown students should elect GUSA senators who genuinely want to improve student life by actively engaging in the legislative process. However, the responsibility falls on the Senate itself to ensure that its members continue to make their Senate responsibilities a priority.
