Of all the things that the Student Senate is good at, record keeping is not on that list. While there has never been a need to prod the Senate to collect data, craft legislation, or issue resolutions, it just doesn’t save records of them. We have very little about our history, and what our policies are. This is something that is changing, but we have “misplaced” years of our documents.
The Senate is the policy making arm of student government here at RPI, and it is important for us to keep a consistent message. We can’t allow ourselves to be open to exploitation by allowing people to simply wait another year or three to see if the next Senate is going to have the same reservations on the same issues. There is something to be learned by those who have come before us, and we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of pretending that we are the first people to approach the problems faced today. The students at this school are nothing if not predictable. When the administration puts up an new building, we complain about where they put it. When the school makes a change to the any of the programs that affect students, students rebel at the idea of change.
Since I became Grand Marshal, I have been researching the Senate’s historical stance on one issue that has cropped up several times, the idea of the Union funding religious and political groups. There was no single place for me to look and see what the old decisions were, the old arguments that were made, and even what those decisions have been. Had it not been for the E-Board’s extensive records, we wouldn’t have even known that there was precedence on this issue. I have been going over old issues of The Polytechnic, and doing research in the libraries’ archives, in an effort to glean as much as I can about the Senate’s stance in the past. The records of other groups are really the only records we have to look at.
It shouldn’t be this hard to find out what we have done in the past. The Senate should have records of its history, and these records need to be kept up to date. This is why I have proposed to the Senate that we create the position of historian. There should be someone who is there to archive the works of the Senate at the end of the year, to begin the long process of documenting what we have accomplished in the past, and be there to help the Senate find out historical precedence.
That is why I am calling out to the students. Is there someone out there who wants to get involved behind the scenes and help sort out our history? Are you interested in how we ended up with one of the most powerful and influential student governments in the region? Do you want to begin the process of documenting over a hundred years of our history? If you do, get in touch, e-mail me at gm@rpi.edu.
