We here at The Poly would like to congratulate both the Student Senate and Russell Brown ’14 for Brown’s appointment as Grand Marshal this past Monday night. The speed with which the Senate acted to recover from the loss of former GM Lee Sharma ’12 is commendable.
After Sharma’s somewhat mysterious disappearance at the start of this semester and last semester’s motion regarding President Shirley Ann Jackson, the Senate has taken a hit to their public image in the past few months. Their efficiency in filling the vacant Grand Marshal position helps quell those sorts of sentiments, and the fact that the meeting leading to this appointment did not last six hours also points to a Senate more focused on its mission of representing the interests of the students.
In each of their campaign speeches, the candidates spoke of working to make the Senate better for the students it represents, and of trying to recover and move forward. We at The Poly support this. A stronger student government is better for the students, and a student government with a leader is a stronger student government. The Grand Marshal is a crucial link between the student government and the administration, a link that is even more crucial now than it has been in the past. Relations have been strained between the students, the Students Senate, and the administration since the events that occurred at the end of the last semester, and The Poly sincerely hopes that the new GM—and the GM elections coming up in May—will go a long way towards repairing and improving those bridges.