This year, just over five-thousand people—about 12% of eligible voters—voted in the elections for the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), Penn State UP’s undergraduate student government. This is an increase of about 600 voters from last year. The (virtual) election for President and Vice President was contested, meaning there were at least two tickets vying for the offices—but last year’s was not, nor was the year’s before. What is going on here?
Whether it be the lack of voter turnout or the lack of candidate interest, the UPUA has historically seen low involvement around election time, much to the detriment of the legitimacy of the organization and to the effectiveness of its work. When candidates run unopposed, the Elections Commission has historically replaced the typical “debate” format with a town hall-styled interview. However, these candidates lack an environment that really digs into their answers and ideas to offer constructive criticism and ultimately promote accountability for them. When relatively broad and unquantifiable, however noble they may be, become the official platform of the organization, its members—including the leaders to which the ideas belong—spend so much time brainstorming how to actually mobilize them that other important subjects slip through the cracks. The organization’s silence or fumbling in responding to these problems have unfortunately been where the most harm has happened in terms of public perception.
For example, it’s common knowledge that universities across our country have a horrible problem with sexual assaults and similar misconduct, and Penn State, as it was recently reminded by the Department of Education, is no exception. While our student government has historically recognized pervasive problems like this, it’s shifted its attention toward the students, opposed to the leaders of the University. The organization would rather host “programming weeks” designed to direct students’ attention to problems of that scope with slogans like “let’s talk about the elephant in the room” (with regard to mental health), than actually using its weight to fight for students in meetings with the specific university offices, administrators, and even elected officials.
This has always puzzled me. An organization that underwent a total transformation, cocoon and all, just to realign itself with a mission of “advocacy” instead of student “governance” has invariably spent its time advocating to the wrong people. From that perspective, it’s no wonder people aren’t interested in getting involved with the organization. Real change doesn’t come about from simply talking about the problems (especially with those who are experiencing them); action must always follow. After all, what else is the point of an advocacy group? Are we to say that we’ve been elected to “represent” students in meetings by speaking for them… to them about the problems we face together? No, we should not. At least not without a rallying call to action.
Students deserve a student government that will fight for them in the rooms they can’t make it to. In the conversations about the pervasiveness of sexual assaults on campus, in the conversations with Board of Trustees leadership about climate action as a priority of the student body, and in the day-to-day interactions with the public. If the student government is going to talk about sexual assault (ideally, without inappropriately handing out condoms while doing so, as has actually happened before), it had better be pushing for answers about how the administration is working to curb it. If they’re to discuss mental health, we’d better work to not only promote the resources offered by our university but actively work to better them in line with our students’ values and priorities. The organization’s advocacy is an extremely powerful tool, when used at the right time and when directed toward the right people.
Even more, the organization must be bold in doing what is right, and it must be willing to elevate others in the process. I can’t tell you how disappointing it has been to hear from alumni of the organization that its work should stay non-political in ways more than just avoiding partisanship. Perhaps this antiquated and flawed thinking of uselessness is another reason why participation in our elections has been so low. We’re a non-partisan organization; we do not make political stances or endorsements (at least not based on party affiliation), we do not accept students belonging to one party and not another. But to suggest that we should sit idly by and do or say nothing in the wake of racial discrimination and injustice, accelerating climate change, rampant sexual assault, and actual attempts to overthrow our nation’s democracy is nothing short of an awful take.
As I’ve said, a student government should fight for students, especially when they’ve been treated unfairly and unjustly. It must actively condemn racism and bigotry and work to build a safer environment for those students most affected by it. It must stand up for our fellow students’ futures, for our children’s’ futures, and for their children’s’ futures in the wake of global catastrophes and injustices resulting from climate change. It must recognize that it has a responsibility to promote civic engagement and participation across the student body and throughout our nation’s democracy.
Perhaps most importantly, it must be willing to change itself to meet these goals and others like it. It cannot promote justice and equity on campus without embodying it internally. It cannot fight for students’ worth and well-being without treating everyone its members meet with dignity and respect. If it cannot amend itself to at least practice what it wants to preach, then hope truly is lost.
But in the case of the UPUA, it has been able to make these changes. It has opened its doors to those who hadn’t been invited to the process before. It has identified key areas in need of improvement and made them. These changes have often taken time to achieve, but they’ve nonetheless been made and serve as examples to future leaders of the organization that this positive change is both possible and often necessary.
As such, we’ve been able to achieve a great deal. The UPUA recognized the need for grading equity in light of the remote learning period and successfully pushed for the implementation of an alternative grading scale three times in a row, much to the surprise of our fellow Big Ten student governments. We’ve worked with organizations like the Black Caucus to call on the University to change the code of conduct to better protect students from acts of hate and bias—and it did. Advocacy related to honoring the native land our school was built on has led to that history being placed within Lion Ambassadors’ tours and into a future plaque that acknowledges the history which existed long before Penn State was constructed. We’ve been able to receive a commitment from the university to release the data from its 2018 Penn State Sexual Misconduct Survey, which to this date not been released but which needs to be to inform our actions in combatting it. In calling for climate action at Penn State, we’ve elevated the voices of those who’ve called for it long before us and have set students’ futures as a priority for the leadership of the University and of the Board of Trustees while firming up the University’s commitment to establishing a working group to plan how to tackle some of these large goals.
The list goes on as we round out our terms—and, more accurately, our campaign to redefine what a student government ought to do for its peers as a representative advocacy organization. There is power to bring about real and substantive change at this university and others just like it throughout the country via our student governments. We need only to put the effort in and do it.
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