The problem with sunshine

[greybeta]

I have a pessimistic thought about the "open sunshine" policy that seems to be sweeping through my student government (I will explain later when I don't have a statistics test hovering above my head).

Do you know what the problem is with staring at the bright side of things for too long? After awhile, you'll be blinded.

Comments

[md2020.livejournal.com]

I agree, sadly i do not believe in the good of people all the time.

[megmcddd.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem pv, its a painful one isn't it?

[megmcddd.livejournal.com]

Good point, but I think we were staring more at the dark side of things last night. All these complications are irritatingly superfluous...can't we all just get along???

[moocowrich.livejournal.com]

Your student government is no doubt in a better position than mine. Currently we do not have an up-to-date copy of our constitution or most of our bylaws. People are scrambling to rectify this problem, but it's wreaking havoc all over the place in the meantime.

On top of this, almost all those who have experience will be leaving positions of power at the end of this semester. It's going to be a fun mess.

Oh, and we have funding boards that all students can access money from for whatever programming they'd like. These funds have very specific bylaws. None of them are available. There are something like seven or eight paper copies floating around, and that's all. How can people be expected to submit proper funding proposals when they can't possibly know how to do it?

In other words, don't feel too bad about your student government :-)

[culculhen.livejournal.com]

Spoken like a true confident pessimist, and you know what... you're absolutely right, staring at the bright side of things to long will blind you.
CIMS (chuckling in myself)

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

I believe in the greater good in people. But, as FAC chair, I have to expect their worst.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Well, I do think Cabinet and Senate should start working towards being more open. I don't mind that, especially since we deal with issues that are important to the student body.

Cabinet can do as it wishes, as FAC chair I'm just there to make sure the Treasurer takes care of the money (the whole checks and balances thing). We have to get around to educating both sides on how each one works. Cabinet is looser and more free wheeling, which is good when you're the ones planning events. The freer atmosphere encourages idea. Senate is more strict and tighter, which is good when you have to make opinions. The tighter atmosphere forces people to concentrate on what they're going to say before they talk. This I learned after a year in Senate.

Oh, and the open sunshine thing refers to FAC's confidential criteria...but I need some time to properly get my thoughts out.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Both our Senate and Cabinet are relatively young, but we still have quite a bit of leadership for this and next year. Our IS director is doing a great job moving stuff to the internet and updating the website daily.

Hey, do you mind if I email you some questions about how you fund things? There's going to be quite a lot of discussion in this on Senate, and knowing how other universities work will help me out.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'm one confident pessimist.

[moocowrich.livejournal.com]

Sure, feel free to email away. We're a really small school so what we do probably won't help much practically, but sharing info is a good way to bring up some new ideas.

It's probably important to note that most of our campus actively dislikes our student government and it will probably be overhauled entirely in the near future.

[thucyditron.livejournal.com]

Here's the problem with your argument: you can talk about the darkside of human nature and use it to justify keeping the information from the student body all you want, but the alternative you have accepted is trusting that information to a much smaller body of people. The question is do you really trust a small group of people with no oversight to be more honest than the student body at large? If you do then you seem to have an awful lot of faith in yourself considering you place little in humanity generally.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Remember, I'm playing devil's advocate. Why tell people more than they need to know?

We trust a small group of people everyday to make the right decisions for us. We just hope they're experienced and honest enough not to screw us over.