Staff Editorial: UA, running on empty

Later tonight, eight freshmen -- newcomers to both the University and its student government -- will join the ranks of the Undergraduate Assembly.

These newest UA members will likely bring with them a healthy dose of optimism for the task ahead. But what they won't bring to the table, unfortunately, is even a basic understanding of the UA and the issues confronting student government at Penn. Nor have they shown any initiative to learn about their desired jobs during this "campaign season." And that has to change.

Considered individually, the numbers from this week's Daily Pennsylvanian survey -- which indicated that most freshman UA candidates are overwhelmingly ignorant of the functions of Penn's student government -- mean very little.

The fact, for example, that only nine of 38 candidates could tell you that Robert Barchi is Penn's provost may be chalked up to first-year inexperience. That only a handful could tell you that Dana Hork is the UA's chairwoman -- or that there are six student government bodies at Penn -- may indicate that this year's crop of candidates is concerned more with their own priorities than seemingly bureaucratic details.

More likely, these shortcomings of information indicate a fundamental flaw in the way student government elections are run at Penn.

Currently, no steadfast mechanism exists for providing UA candidates with an overview of the tasks and issues that will meet them should they gain election to the body. Students are encouraged to run, provided with explicit rules about campaigning and then left alone to conduct their campaigns -- which are, understandably, often based on little more than vacuous promises and farcical taglines.

For freshmen, that arrangement is particularly troublesome, because it establishes an early precedent that the UA lacks depth and seriousness. And that reputation, sadly, often lasts through the four years of an average stay at Penn.

UA and other student leaders must take action to remedy these problems, by developing an election system that introduces candidates to the basic requirements of their intended positions, and demands that these future "leaders," before deciding to become part of it, devote even a small amount of time to learning the issues that confront Penn's student government.

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