Stick to what you know best

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week and a half, you must have noticed that the campus is abuzz with election talk. It's hard to miss the huge blurbs in The Daily Pennsylvanian, and you can't take three steps down Locust Walk without being reminded to vote.

It's student-government election season, and it's time to elect a new Undergraduate Assembly. But what exactly will the 2006-2007 UA be dealing with?

This year has seen a tremendous increase in proposals brought to the UA, many of which deal with political issues. As a result, the UA Executive Board has created a set of new guidelines governing which proposals may be brought to the floor. While the guidelines have yet to be officially passed, they include making sure that the student body cares about the issue at hand and whether the proposal can effect tangible change on campus.

While these guidelines are a step in the right direction, the UA must be extremely careful to maintain its role as the undergraduate voice on campus issues and to not overstep its boundaries by taking political positions on behalf of the student body.

UA Chairwoman and College senior Rachel Fersh understands the need to make sure that UA decisions accurately reflect the opinions of the student body. "If student opinion of the UA goes down, we immediately lose accountability," she said. "Our decisions have less impact."

However, with only 33 UA members, there is no way that the UA can be expected to accommodate the views of every single student on campus.

Unfortunately, that's an occupational hazard of representative government. We vote for people that will advocate campus policies that we support. We don't always like the results, but we do all we can and then hope for the best.

But that's just it: We elect UA members whose views align with ours on campus policies. Did any candidate include their political views in their personal statement?

Of course not. And we wouldn't dream of asking. We care that they share our views on the dining halls, the Penn Course Review and study space -- not national politics.

Which is why the UA has to be careful when addressing any political issue. College senior and UA member Spencer Scharff recently brought forth a proposal to the UA Executive Board condemning warrantless wiretapping by the federal government and its obstruction of academic discourse. The proposal has since been rejected by the Executive Board.

Although Scharff has chosen not to continue advocating the proposal, he felt that because it "dealt directly with the academic ramifications of wiretapping," it belonged on the UA agenda, even though wiretapping is a primarily national issue.

"The UA shouldn't feel uncomfortable [talking] about anything," he said, adding that he hoped the UA will become more open-minded in the issues it addresses in the future.

Being open-minded is good, but for the UA to take a blanket position on any partisan issue -- even in the context of academia -- is dangerous. There is no shortage of organizations on campus through which the student body can make their political voices heard, and that list should not include our elected student government.

While most of the student body can probably agree that impediments to academia are undesirable, the first resolution of the proposal "[urges] the University Council and the University administration to use all available means to oppose warrantless searches of U.S. citizens."

Such a blanket condemnation of national policy is an unfair and useless exercise of power by UA members, whose political views were never considered in the election process.

While the UA has tremendous ability to affect campus policies, their influence on national issues is quite limited. For example, if the UA decided to condemn the South Dakota abortion ban, it would have little actual effect on the national agenda because no one in South Dakota or Washington cares what the UA thinks about national issues. This is precisely why the new guidelines "hit the nail on the head" in defining the UA's objectives, according to Fersh. If a UA proposal will not have any true influence on Penn's campus, the issue does not belong on the agenda.

The UA consistently does an excellent job in dealing with campus issues, from freshman housing to Fling. There is no need for them to stretch their time even further to address national issues; they are doing a great job exactly where they are needed.

Liz Hoffman is a sophomore political science major from New York, N.Y. New York Minute appears on Mondays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.