Right from 6:00 pm yesterday to this dawn, some of us were locked down in the SRC Union Building entangled in the vetting of aspirants for the various SRC executive portfolios. It was interesting as usual as it exposed the defect in some aspirants’ knowledge on the very problems students have and the way to deal with it – and more positively a great deal of ideas as to how to deal with them from some.
Me, for once has not been very supportive of the idea to vet aspirants – I was of the view that make the eligibility criteria clearly spelt just like it’s done for national elections out and enforce them rigidly instead of appointing a few to interview ambitious students who want to “serve” the student body and indeed I was more clearer in my mind that, that’s the way to go looking at how some members of the Vetting panel seemed as though they wanted to settle long-standing personal scores with aspirants.
Indeed there are some people who will be all vociferous at vetting – seem to have all the solutions to the problems but do nothing when elected whilst we may have some who may perform poorly at vetting due to certain reasons but may be able to fix the myriad of problems students face.
To me, leave the decision as to who is qualified to man any executive office or who should rule the Students to the Student electorates – let them, just like we do nationally, impose their trust in a select few for the next academic year rather than subtly leaving it in the hands of less than 10 students who feel all-powerful and want to dictate to aspirants as to what they should even do.
I’m against all form of totalitarianism, and indeed when I watched the recent Appointment Committee Hearings to vet ministerial nominees and how some members of the committee felt all-powerful throwing around very unnecessary questions with some even asking people to beg or risk being approved by a majority decision, little did I know that I was going to see a more sophisticated and bourgeoisie repeat of that behavior among undergraduate students – some who are even below the level of study of the various aspirants.
But what happened yesterday through to this dawn was a classic example of some people who knew very little but trying to appear all researched on the panel, being verbose and appearing imposing on candidates – their crime, they want to serve students.
But that’s what we’ve agreed to by our collective selves. And it was an interesting exercise as it brought to fore certain pertinent challenges affecting students and the way to go about it.
For the many problems of Students, the least we expect is to see a vetting panel – some members I should add whose interest is the Names of Members of Council, names of The various directors of the various directories. Respectfully, those are all needless as it wouldn’t affect their performance in office.
If a Treasurer aspirant doesn’t know the name of the Finance Director or his deputy, it wouldn’t matter in his performance of his duty. If a presidential candidate doesn’t know the composition of the University Council, it wouldn’t matter when he performs his role. And so when you place so much emphasis on those peripherals, you can have people memorize those details to head and rattle them but wouldn’t even know what the problems students face not to talk of the way to deal with it.
But some people distinguished themselves. Particularly the Legal Advisor – yesterday was the first time I was encountering him but he’s earned a great admirer, Abekah, the President of Accra City Campus SRC was as usually fantastic and the others too. Generally the vetting committee performed well much to the admiration of many attendees.
But going ahead we must look at the way we do things, particularly whether it’s relevant to subjectively vet aspirants or really reform the modalities to make it more relevant in the face of the myriad student problems but not just putting people behind a table, some who just want to settle personal scores or prove their Queen’s language mettle.
We must not settle for mediocrity!