Thursday, February 4th 2010

By chris erl

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a genius. If you know me, you will have already concluded that the Swiss philosopher is among my political idols, as he observed and commented on the affairs of men in such a way that brought light to the darkness of political theory and refined it from a basic philosophical quirk into an art.

In the depths of The Social Contract, his seminal work on the legitimacy of government, he fittingly remarks on the nature of representative government in England. His theory is that a government is only legitimate if the people take part in creating the laws that will govern their lives directly, rather than through ‘representatives’.“The English people,” he quipped, “believes itself to be free. It is greatly mistaken; it is free only during the election of the members of Parliament.” Our Presidential election is now over, and as we emerge from the fog of war, we return back to the state of bondage that has characterized our adult lives. The student unions of our post-secondary institutions function in the same way as the Westminster legislatures of the larger world do, replacing democracy in its purest, most beautiful form with what can only be described as the illusion of freedom. As we are beguiled by the candidates and enthralled by their clever campaign gimmicks, we lose the awareness of our captivity, which is only annunciated by the periods in which we are subjects of an authoritarian class selected by the masses to speak for the masses and create laws for the masses. The legitimacy of an organization must be brought into question when a system claims to provide the ultimate freedom to its participants (who have no option but to be members of the system) yet simply funnels our rights into the hands of select few.

This is hardly a cry for anarchy. Government is good, but a government controlled by the people’s will is even better. It is the duty of citizens to develop ideas, draft proposals, debate motions, vote on laws and, at the very least, respect them when they’re implemented.

Government, on the other hand, works out the technicalities, sets down the official laws and then assists in the interpretation and implementation of said laws.Rousseau sums it up nicely: “The deputies of the people, therefore, neither are nor can be its representatives; they are merely its agents. Any law that the populace has not ratified in person is null; it is not a law at all.” Liberty is about action, and if we all want our freedoms, we’re all going to have to participate in the democratic process.

Despite its flaws, the MSU provides us with a freedom few other assemblies allow: the General Assembly. Yet this forum is convened only once a year or at the will of the president or a petition from a percentage of the MSU’s members. The rest of the time, we let SRA members speak for us, debate for us and legislate for us. “In a well run city,” Rousseau says, “everyone flies to the assemblies.” Voter turn-out is low, few MSU members attend SRA meetings and General Assemblies haven’t met quorum since 1995. The people are hardly flocking to the assemblies, because they feel disconnected, disenfranchised and disinterested in the bureaucratic bickering that characterizes our student government.

The people, it would seem, do not see it as our student government. The MSU will only matter if we change that. As an organization, the McMaster Student’s Union is impotent unless we give it meaning through properly and quickly reasserting that the only government we recognize is the government we all participate in. General Assemblies must be held, at the least, once a month. Motions to be debated should be brought up one month, to give students appropriate warning over the impending proposal, then addressed and put to a vote the following month. Questions and voting choices should be developed by the Elections Committee, with input from the motion forwarder. In addition to votes being taken at the Assembly, votes should also be taken online through MacVote. Passed motions should then go to the SRA, whose sole responsibility should be analyzing these new “laws” for any problems that may arise and putting the finishing touches on them if need be.

The students as legislators, the SRA as overseers and the President as spokes-person. There is a recipe for a student government that works. Government of the students, by the students, for the students.

Our government.