Sen. actions are disappointing

This weekend, CSC’s Student Senate hosted members of Wayne State College and Peru State College Student Senates for the Senate Leadership Conference, and I was asked to cover a couple of the meetings for The Eagle. I can honestly say I was impressed with some of the ideas brought up in these meetings, but I was not impressed with the way some of the senators acted during the meetings.

The students who are part of Student Senate are supposed to be leaders on this campus. Maybe not everyone feels this way, but to me, being a leader means you are the one in charge, the one willing to put yourself out there for criticism, and the one who doesn’t put others down.

One of the main problems I noticed at this conference, and at a couple of the Student Senate and CAB meetings I have been to this semester, is that some senators don’t have the ability to publicly speak. At least, not loud enough and clearly enough, without shaky voices, for everyone in the room to hear.

I understand that public speaking is not an easy thing for everyone, but if you hold a public office, like a senator position, this should be something you work on. I had a hard time hearing a lot of the discussion that was going on at these meetings during the weekend because the senators presenting were not speaking loudly enough.

The other disappointment I noticed during the meetings was the disrespectful cellphone use during the other schools’ presentations. I will admit that I used my phone briefly during one of the presentations, but only because I had to ask the managing editor a question.

When you host a leadership conference to learn how other schools run their Senates and other organizations on their campus, I find it incredibly disrespectful to be on your phone ignoring the information being presented to you, especially when it should directly benefit you as a senator.

Finally, after the meeting on Saturday, as I was getting information from a senator from Wayne State, I was asked, “So are you one of the reporters who writes the awful articles about Senate?”

This infuriated me. The first question that came to my mind when I heard this was, where would he get an idea like that?

The logical conclusion I came to was that one of our Senators must have told him that we write “awful articles about Senate.” It should be noted that I was asked to leave the round table discussions on Friday afternoon, so I do not know what was said behind closed doors. As leaders of this campus, when others come to visit our school, I would think you would want to tell them the good things we do on campus and not bring down other clubs and groups.

Apparently that was not the case when these schools came to visit us if this is the type of question reporters get asked when all they want is information about the students’ names. I was disappointed that senators would tell other schools this kind of thing.

Also, if this type of article is what constitutes as an “awful article about Senate,” I’m a little more disappointed in our Senate. As senators you put yourself out there for criticism; it’s what happens when you hold a public office, and people are going to have opinions about what you do. Some of us are just willing to put our opinions out there and have them published and take the criticism that goes with it. As a newspaper, we will take the criticism and ask for responses.

I hope when senators take their trip to Florida in November, they learn a few things about what it means to be  a leader. I expect to see changes in the way Senate runs things on campus, and I do hope that those attending the conference learn how to act in a public office.