Just Me

[N0HBDY 1,175]

Hello there VHL,

 

Call it a little sad or whatever you want but I just wanted to share kind of a life update with you all. So I just ended my term as the Vice President of my college's student government. We were the underdogs last year because myself and the president had not even been apart to Stu. gov before we eventually won our election. Fast forward a year and my term is over... we ran again and lost by 20 votes which, it is what it is but. This role has changed my life, I was given the opportunity to lead a group outside of a sport for the first time ever, talk with my uni's administration on a frequent basis, and work on projects much larger than myself. I truly can't believe how fast time passed and I enjoyed my year immensely up until the end. Politics will be politics and so the people that ran against me this year came from within the organization (which is expected) but because of that for the better half of the past semester the environment within our office has been horrid. There was a gigantic divide between my administration/campaign's supporters and the others in the office. The relationships with people I had only just began to build came crumbling down, which is what hurts the most as I leave. With how I am I like to avoid conflict, during campaigning we noticed several campaign violations from the other team and I advocated that we not pick a fight because we were better than that. In my eyes the other team was scummy in some ways (they did bring violations against us) and my team was scummy in theirs. We end up losing and now I sit during the next bit of drama, mostly brought on by my outgoing colleagues.

 

So basically the next p/vp started romanic relationships with other executives on our team, turned them against us, and are now trying to give them exec roles for the next year. One of the partners they are currently trying to give a role to kind of brought a lite version of SA allegations against the current president (my running partner) during campaigning. It was all sorts of fucked up, NOT TRUE, and didn't help our office chemistry at all since the alleger was still on our exec team. So the office chemistry is fucked, no one has talked to each other for the past couple of months which is just stupid because it defeats the purpose to represent our fellow students, at least in an efficient way.

 

As I write this they are in the process of swearing in the next execs, the outgoing president worked with a few senators to stop the appointing of the person that essentially accused them due to conflicts of interest and whatnot, I'm waiting on the decision but I kind of know what to expect.

 

So that's where I'm at currently I can provide an update later possibly if people are interested but I just wanted to share a little bit of whats going on with me as I move away from a role that was like a full time job for me. Would be open to hearing if my administration or the next administration is in the wrong.

[RJMW 184]

It's crazy how even student politics can get like this. People care so much about the wrong things and want positions just for sake of saying they have them.

 

My university had a bunch of random student government drama the past 2 years, it sucks.

[Nykonax 1,694]

my student gov doesnt do shit lol. 20k students only 2k vote. recent president elect quit cause she got some government job and they had to re-run elections, barely met quorum lol. at least sounds like you were dedicated which was good. hopefully you're proud of your term and what you did, and just know student gov is almost always filled with the worst resume farming people ever lol. would recommend just getting into like club governance lol, I feel like it's so much better.

[gorlab 4,431]

false SA accusations is crazy work 

[Gustav 6,648]

The student government president at my undergrad school got formally impeached and removed for essentially funneling school funds to himself by hiring his own company to DJ at events. THAT one was at least really funny to see go down. 
 

I know people who have been involved with other student governments at other places and it is always messy, even if they had a good time and did cool things. Like it or not, college students are still pretty immature and the possibility of power and name recognition is enough to drive some people to want to join student government completely irrespective of anything to do with serving the community. It should come as no surprise that the same people who think that way also have no problem with stepping on others to get there. 
 

But yeah, that sucks. Keep in mind that the second you get out of school, no one will care even a little bit about who was in student government  

[Grape 897]

My fraternity politics were very similar to that. We had a guy that aligned himself with the more "frat" side of things running for president, and a small group of guys concocted a lie in which he attempted to SA another brother's gf when he was administering CPR and was aggressive to paramedics when she was being transported to the hospital. Since we didn't have all the facts and the guy wasn't able to defend himself (it was brought up during discussion for the elections where the candidates were removed from the room), he ended up losing that election. I lost my re-election as vice president of internal affairs due to allegations of me drunk driving and neglecting my duties (both false), and another brother was recently impeached from vice president of external affairs on trumped up charges of disorderly conduct.

Basically, politics will always be politics, no matter what the organization is.