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The Terror of Student Run Organizations
Sep. 14th, 2010 02:04 pmThe Graduate Organization for my department is a little bit..broken. I'm not sure exactly what happened and where, but suddenly there is friction between the members (all graduate students in the department) and the leadership. And no one seems to know what to do about it.
The problem chiefly lies with a mis-communication about several things. The first of which is what the purpose of the organization IS and what we expect our executive officers to be doing. There seems to be a sort of social/party focus from leadership while the members want a more scholarly bent. So participation is suffering quite a bit. This is because members have no recourse (without seeming to bitch and moan) if they don't agree with how things are going, so they vote with their feet. To which the officers then accuse them of being lazy whingers who never participate. There isn't a dialogue; ideas from non-leadership get shot down a lot.
The thing is, the members are stuck with whomever is elected (I'm not sure that there is a mechanism for a change or not) representing them to the faculty. They can vote with their feet and with their complaining, but not much else. Bah.
The problem chiefly lies with a mis-communication about several things. The first of which is what the purpose of the organization IS and what we expect our executive officers to be doing. There seems to be a sort of social/party focus from leadership while the members want a more scholarly bent. So participation is suffering quite a bit. This is because members have no recourse (without seeming to bitch and moan) if they don't agree with how things are going, so they vote with their feet. To which the officers then accuse them of being lazy whingers who never participate. There isn't a dialogue; ideas from non-leadership get shot down a lot.
The thing is, the members are stuck with whomever is elected (I'm not sure that there is a mechanism for a change or not) representing them to the faculty. They can vote with their feet and with their complaining, but not much else. Bah.