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Show SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY STUDENT ASSOCIATION I COMMENTARY I I Students can make a difference With the help of professors, encouraging students to take action on campus, individuals at SUU have been more involved with the student senate this year, then in the past. A prime example is Suzanne Larson's Small Group Communication class. The class project for the sm all group class, was for a group of four or five students to take action on campus and try to make a difference with the students and community. Three of these projects have resulted in bills presented before senate for the purpose of attaining funding to accomplish the goal of this assignment. The first of the three bills cured a problem that has lasted for over 11 years. This bill sponsored by Sen . Brook Madsen of the Co ll ege of Business, T echn ol ogy and Co mmunica tion, requested $38 for the purchase of bird window guards to be placed on the windows of the General Education Classroom Building. These. bird guards will prevent birds from flying into windows often resulting in death. Along with this project, two othe r proj ect s have been presented in bill format before the student senate. These bills, if passed, will result in an aluminum can recycling program on campus, and the displaying of m otivational thoughts in all of the elevators on campus . These three projects are the result of students identifying ways of imp rovi ng the ca mpu s and taking s t eps t oward accompl ishing that task. Students involved in these projects h ave had the o pp ort unit y of l e a rning the procedure in proposing a change before the campus community. Heather Jonas, a student in Professor Larson's class, said, "I am excited at the opportunity th at I have had to learn more about the senate and how to go through the proper channels to present a bill." All of the senators are willing to listen and help som eone who sees a need to change something on campus. For those individuals who have ideas brewing in their heads, the path of action is quite simple. First, studen ts should present the idea to the senator of their college. The senator will then assist them in accomplishing their idea. The senators encourage all students to voice their concerns and ideas to the senate. Marli Maxfi e ld , ac adem ic vice president, a nd form er Business, Technology and Communication senator, said "I am exci ted to see more students attending the senate meetings and voicing their opinions on the bills being presented." Students who are interested in attending the student senate mee ting s ca n go to the student conference room of th e Sharwan Smith Center. The m eetings are held every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Brook Madsen , Tate Bryan and Marli Maxfield are SUUSA officers. 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Campaign finance reform happens to be a very important issue, which is why for the past year it ha s been the s ubj ect of lengthy and sincere hearin gs by th e House And Senate Joi nt Committee Of Men Going Blah Blah Blah. Like most Americans, you probably paid no attention to these these hearings, so I'm going to explain the major findings here, using simple layperson's terms such as "pickles." Basically, our campaign-finance system works this way: Donors give money to politicians, who then use the government to do favors for the donors. It's exactly like buying a hamburger, except that under our laws, everybody must pretend that nobody is buying anything, and nobody is selling anything. The donors must pretend that they're giving money solely because they support good government; the politicians must pretend that the favors will benefit the entire nation. The fact that th e fede ral government is basically for sale during the campaign finance hearings was largely disregarded in favor of endless nit-picky discussion about exactly how President Clinton and Vice President G ore grubbed for money, and especially whether they grubbed for money ON federal property (Bad!) or OFF (OK!), and whether they grubbed for money from foreign sleazebags (Bad!) or domest ic sleazebags (OK!). The politicians in Congress, who of course have spent the majority of their adult lives grubbing for money, expressed great shock upon learning how campaign financing works. So did President Clinton and Vice President Gore. They had no idea! So now everybody in Washington is fed up with the current system . Dem ocr ats and Republicans agree: It's time for REAL reform, darn it! No more messing around! And thus it appears that, after years of stalling, this nation really and truly will have meaningful campaignfinance reform, just as soon as we establish a viable trout farm on Jupiter. Until then, our elected leaders will continue to grub relentlessly for money. Why do they do this? Is it because they're hypocritical gasbags with the ethical standards of tapeworms? Yes! I mean: No! It's not their fault ! They have no choice! Because in America, the only way you can get elected to high office is to hire expensive consultants, who conduct expensive polls to find out what the voters think, and then, having found out that the voters think that all politicians are slime, make expensive TV commercials wherein you show a hideously unflattering photograph of your opponent and have a snarling announcer say something like: "Harvey Hackensilt would like you to believe that he has never eaten live human babies. Who's he trying to fool?" If you don' t run this kind of campaign, you can't get elected; and if you don't get elected, you can't realize the idealistic dream that attracted you to politics in the first place: the dream of getting re-elected. So let's analyze the cash flow: Sleazeballs who want government favors give mon ey to politicians, who give it to consultants, pollsters, advertising agencies and television stations, who get you to elect the politicians, who thus get more money from sleazeballs. I say this stinks. I say we should have a fair, honest and dem ocratic system whereby the money would go directly from the sleazeballs to the voters. That's right: I say we eliminate the politicians altogether, and put the donors directly into office. The way it would work is, you'd go into the voting booth, and there would be a list of donors competing for each office, and next to each donor there would be a number indicating how many dollars the donor was willing to pay for your vote. When you pulled that donor's lever, the dollars would immediately come out of a slot in the voting machine. If we had a system like this, voter turnout would be WAY higher. Of course another likely result is that w e'd elect pe ople wh o were criminal, or incompetent, or who were being given a congressional seat as a present for their 8th birthday. In other words, it would not be any worse than it is now. So I say we adopt my plan. First we need t o ame nd th e Constitution. Assuming it has not been sold. Dave Barry is a nationally syndicated columnist. |