By Andrew Greenberg, Graduate Student

The recent decision by the Students’ Association to purchase Iron & Wine tickets shows poor stewardship skills. SA purchased 129 tickets to the concert, while the total undergraduate population is around 4,000.

SA funds should primarily go to service organizations and academic groups. How many Treadaway Kids activities could the money spent on the concert have funded? How many conferences could students have attended? How many campuswide activities could have been run? Instead of maximizing the amount of good that could have been done with students’ money, the SA Congress has funded a relatively frivolous activity.

This shows a major problem within the Student’s Association: the SA Congress shows a frightening level of apathy. This problem was present when I was a member of the SA Congress. Only a small percentage of the SA Congress cares about the activities of SA. Some get elected because they want a line on their resume. Others get elected and find they do not care for the workings of SA. Very few actually care for the work; those very few work with no check on their activities.

This apathy leads to actions such as the purchase of Iron & Wine tickets for a small percentage of students. I wonder how much more responsible SA would be with students’ money if more members of the SA Congress cared about their responsibilities.

The student body should care more about what SA does. Every undergraduate student pays money to SA each semester. This money should be spent in a way that helps the most people do good things.