Steve Brauntuch: Another UA rep bites the dust

Despite playing in only 15 of his team's 50 games this season, Vince Carter will start for the Eastern Conference in this weekend's NBA All-Star Game. And unlike fellow starters Tracy McGrady and Allen Iverson, who offered their starting spots to Michael Jordan for his last All-Star Game (Jordan declined both offers), Carter did not volunteer to come off the bench. His reasoning? Sitting would be disrespectful to his fans, who stuffed the ballot boxes enough to give him the third-most votes of anyone in the league. Whether or not you agree with Carter's decision, what cannot be ignored is the respect that Carter has for the people who voted for him and for the game itself. The public chose him over a long list of other candidates -- some deserving, others not -- and he wants to thank them by giving his best effort this Sunday in the NBA's biggest showcase game. Apparently, though, this type of appreciation for public mandates and honorable institutions is not always shared outside the sports world. Take the Undergraduate Assembly, for instance, where four of the group's 33 representatives have either quit or been thrown off the body during this academic year. Two students -- both returning representatives -- quit last fall over concerns about the time commitment. One was voted off the group because he violated the attendance policy for meetings. And last month, another rep quit because she decided to take the semester off. Undoubtedly, all four of these people had valid reasons for taking their leave. And working on the UA is a fairly large time commitment. Each candidate who runs for a spot on the UA assures the voting student body that he will attend the weekly meetings, serve on committees and represent his constituents for the entire school year. However, in accepting a position on the body, these students were denying some of their peers the opportunity to be a part of Penn's largest student government group. When they quit, these reps shirked their responsibilities, struck a blow to a flawed election process and ignored the wishes of their peers. Whether intentional or not, they showed a clear lack of respect for the people who voted them onto the group. No matter -- when someone quits the UA, the body looks to the next-highest vote getter to fill the spot they so coveted when they ran in April. Except for this year, several people in line for spots have actually turned them down, forcing the UA to go even deeper into the pool of candidates just to fill its 33 spots. What's worse is that one of the students who was recently appointed to fill a spot has now missed the last two Sunday night meetings and is in danger of violating the attendance policy as well. Maybe it's just a coincidence that the UA could lose five representatives in a single year. Or maybe it says something about the body itself if the students who are elected to serve don't take their positions seriously enough to stay on. Maybe the problem lies not with the students who quit, but with the organization itself. There are a lot of representatives who take their work on the UA seriously. But there are also a growing number who don't, as evidenced by their departures. How can Penn students be asked to respect the UA if the body's own representatives don't have enough respect for the group to fulfill their obligations? It's unrealistic to believe that the UA can single-handedly alter University policies that affect the entire undergraduate population. It's even unfair to compare the UA's efficiency to that of a high school student government organization, which faces a far less complicated bureaucracy in effecting change. But students should expect the UA to serve as the loudest, most powerful lobbying voice on this campus. Representatives meet regularly with administrators, sit on University Council committees and gain more access and insight into Penn policies than members of any other student group. It's certainly reasonable to assume that if representatives feel strongly enough about lowering tuition for students studying abroad, they can put more direct pressure on the University than any one student planning to go to Spain for a semester. Yet, as the UA begins its stretch run, it experiences what seems like constant changeover, inaugurating a fourth new representative this past Sunday and facing the possibility of adding a fifth somewhere down the line. One is a fluke. Two is a coincidence. Four is a trend, a sign of a problem that must be addressed before the next round of elections this April. As for the representatives who split, showing little respect for their peers is bad enough, but showing little respect for the institution they joined is even worse. UA representatives should take a hint from NBA players and start respecting the people who put them there -- and the body they work for. Steve Brauntuch is a junior Communications major from Tenafly, N.J. and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

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