Editors’ Note: Wyatt Brannon serves as the SGO Chair of Internal Affairs and is a member of The People’s Slate.
Swarthmore students have a right to organize themselves, and that right is in danger of being taken away.
Do you care about living conditions in the dormitories?
Do you want to be respected as a student worker?
Do you have thoughts about meal plans and dining options on campus?
Do you participate in club activities and want to shape rules around what we fund?
Do you want to be included in college governance?
The right to control one’s own affairs is called self-governance. Throughout the 20th century, students fought tooth and nail to gain the power of self-governance through the establishment of student governments. These institutions would recognize and support student organizations more broadly, arbitrate disputes, coordinate student political action, and officially represent the student body through democratic means.
If you want say over your living conditions, over the meal plans, or whether you’re accorded basic rights by the college, you should care about student government.
Swarthmore’s Charter and Bylaws grant no rights to the student body whatsoever. However, the college has traditionally respected the right to self-governance, in part because the students who apply expect it. Previous generations of students fought hard to gain this power. Throughout the 1900s, the Swarthmore student government coordinated electoral action, testified before Congress to defend the Civil Rights Movement, and even organized within national and international associations. However, these powers have been fading for decades now.
Last year, the Student Government Organization (SGO) elections were won overwhelmingly by a group called The People’s Slate, which ran on a platform of increased transparency and a return to the democratic process. These elections saw by far the highest turnout of any SGO election in recent memory. However, the structure of modern-day student government ensured that this energy fizzled out quickly. Student government today is largely a party planning committee rather than a genuine power player on campus.
If students continue not to care about student government, then these institutions will ultimately be merged back into the administration. It would be easy to imagine the Office of Student Engagement (OSE) simply hiring students to plan parties instead of going through an elected body, and most students wouldn’t mind. That’s because none of us remembers what the student body once had, decades ago, when student government had real powers.
The old Student Council had authority. In 1968, the Swarthmore Afro-American Student Society (SASS) made a series of demands to the college relating to admissions of Black students, which were backed by the Student Council. In 1982, the Student Council resolved to support the ultimately successful movement to divest from apartheid. And as late as 2004, we had the power to set the Student Activities Fee ourselves, as attested in The Phoenix. The Student Council also participated in a nationwide push to prevent the de-chartering of Tougaloo College in 1963, as Mississippi state legislators tried to shut down the college in response to its involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
We believe that the student body deserves the right to organize itself. If you agree, then you should come to the Constitutional Convention being held on March 1. At this meeting, we will be discussing the construction of a new student government, one with actual powers that runs in democratic fashion. If you care about student rights, join us. We’ll see you there.
