Last spring, an extraordinary event occurred in Student Government: Members of the Progress and Orange and Blue parties put aside their differences and created a brand-new party that represents all students, not just the lucky few. This new party, the Student Alliance party, immediately got to work by opposing the new Reitz Union student fee. We felt that in times of great economic hardship, the Unite Party was wrong to pass the buck on to the Student Body.
The overwhelming rejection of the Reitz Union Fee on Election Day and the election of 20 members of the Student Alliance party to the Student Senate sent a clear message that the students supported our vision for an open and fair Student Government. While the election proved that it was the average student voter, not the ubiquitous SG official, who had the final say in things, the spring campaign also brought out the very worst of SG. Our party was equated to the Nazi party in anonymous fliers that were distributed around bus stops. All the while we were being accused of being Zionists and having the blood of Palestinians on our hands.
The cowardly perpetrators of these mendacious rumors failed to mention that one of our senators is the president of Justice for Palestine, and many of our members are of the Jewish faith and have lost relatives in the Holocaust. Undeterred by these attacks, we redoubled our efforts at cleaning up SG and made sure that the budget for the upcoming fiscal year was transparent.
It is against the backdrop of such significant progress that three Student Alliance party senators and three non-students decided, without any forewarning, to reconstitute the "Progress Party" last Tuesday in Senate. They said we were being dilatory for questioning cabinet appointees for an average of three minutes to ensure qualified individuals received the positions and that the appointments of the Student Body president weren't being simply rubber-stamped.
They dragged out of the gutter all those nasty episodes from the previous campaign cycle, and most disturbingly, they claimed we had abandoned the values of the original Progress Party. The vision of "progress through participation," for example changing Student Government by making every student a stakeholder has been at the core of our new party. Our graphics and media, organizational outreach and grassroots campaigning all drew from the Progress Party and had members of the original Progress Party at the helm.
This past semester has witnessed the emergence of a credible new movement in Student Government that seeks to end decades of corruption and student indifference. Let's not piss that away.
Keir Lamont and Yevgen Sautin are the president and communications director for the Student Alliance party.
