Applauding DSG's efforts

Last week, Duke Student Government introduced four proposals that could alter the landscape of its elections and internal organization. We applaud DSG’s efforts to continue evaluating its efficacy and today evaluate the efficacy of DSG and its election model.

In the past, we have called on DSG to be more relevant and to bridge the communication gap between its members and the students they serve. The organization has made strides this year in increasing its transparency, and we commend these efforts to improve communication between students, DSG and administrators. Initiatives like assigning each senator their own blog, hosting town hall meetings on the curriculum review and allowing public access to all Student Organization Finance Committee requests are productive steps toward open communication and effective advocacy.

Despite these laudable efforts to inform students, however, many remain uncertain about what DSG accomplishes during its Wednesday night meetings. For most, the white Zagster bikes sprinkled conveniently around campus are among the few tangible outcomes DSG has produced. The organization’s numerous other projects this year—revamping the Women’s Mentoring Network, launching the statistics-based DSG Research Unit, organizing voter registration and transportation and working on an LGBTQ DukeImmerse—go largely unnoticed. If DSG has taken steps to open its channels of communication to reach out to students, then it is now up to students to tune in.

Yet, increased transparency is only as efficacious as the engagement—or disengagement—of the student body. Indeed, one of the problematic barriers between students and DSG is that many students do not know who their senators are or how to reach out with their ideas. Revamping the election process so that students vote based on residential “districts,” as proffered by the first recommendation, may offer a potential remedy. Under this system, the connection between student and representative would be more direct and clear, thereby incentivizing student buy-in. Yet, though increased representation is a step in the right direction, we remain wary about the potential underrepresentation of certain student groups, particularly unaffiliated students.

Another barrier between students and DSG is that the internal operations, language and policy-driven nature of DSG can often be confusing and unapproachable. Where does the jurisdiction of the social culture committee end and BLANK committee begin, for example? The current committee structure was created in 2012, and we agree that returning to the previous model of five rather than seven committees—with a single committee for social culture and residential life and one for facilities and the environment and services—would create a more streamlined and efficacious operation.

While applauding DSG’s efforts thus far, we note that there is still significant room for improvement. The average Duke student remains disconnected with DSG’s activities despite the organization’s increased outreach. One exception is the implementation of Fix My Campus (FMC)—a forum on which students can relay campus concerns to DSG representatives. The Facebook group has over 2,400 members and hosts a constant stream of posts and communication. Given the efficacy of the program—it reduces the initial barrier for communication between DSG and their constituents and often initiates prompt responses—we propose DSG expand the service. By creating a FMC equivalent for each of the five committees, constituents will more easily be able to voice concerns that may fall beyond the scope of a typical recommendation.